You say we are different, that you are not the same as I. But where is this difference, can you find it?
Perhaps it is in our spiritual development. Who could measure such a thing? Who would dare build a hierarchy where one is ahead of the other and life in its glory and the infinity of cause and effect, ups and downs, challenges and successes is ironed out into a two dimensional tree along which one has move further than the other? Is a flowering twig more advanced than a muddy, ancient root?
Who could predict the value of one who makes a sudden leap into freedom while the other is still deep-freezing a traumatic anguish long sustained not only by himself but by his forefathers for generations? Cherishing the lesser state out of loyalty and love?
Isn’t the great witness of consciousness learning as much from this as from every other moment of living?
Who could measure the infinite and eternal? Who could say that the butterfly is more alive than the seagull?
Perhaps you differ from me because you suffer more. Can suffering be measured? Can we compare the agony felt in a rising sun with the trauma of divorce? Would we be so senseless as to think that a broken leg far outruns a life of loneliness? Can suffering ever be measured?
Perhaps you differ from me because you are are very old. Yet I am old too. Ancient. Just as I am a newborn child. And as I am, so are you.
Perhaps we differ in our minds. Yet we never differ in the purity of our silence, out of which all these casual, temporary thoughts are born, to be formed by a history we share in anticipation of a future we are also sharing, regardless.
Perhaps we differ because we have separate bodies. Yet these bodies are vibrating in unison through every cosmic sound. These bodies are made of the same molecules and particles, composing and decomposing in a moment.
These bodies will become one in the dust of the planet and the space of the cosmos, in the water of the oceans and in the fire that lights the night in distant regions where neither of us have ever been.
And maybe, maybe we are eternally different because you are a man and I am a woman. Maybe in this, we could be eternally apart? Yet, look at our children, my love, look at our children, see how they smile.
