Rhythm

Being in the city this week has made me think a lot more. Between the long commute I now have every day and the changed perspective, my thoughts have been flowing vividly, practically surging. And yet it's been difficult for me to put them down into words. There's a certain sensation to it all, a given feeling that I know and understand and am becoming accustomed to, but I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how to put it down into phrases with syllables that make it come out a given way. It's just another one of those things I can't describe adequately at all.

But what I have realized is the sense of rhythm that permeates life. The city itself has allowed me to see it even more clearly, on an even larger scale. The flood of people, the frantic rush to the train or the bus or to get across the street the moment before the light changes. It all has this underlying pulse, like if you just stopped and stood there, you would literally feel the life vibrating around you, completely in tune on a certain wave of rhythm that just carries everyone. In the chaos that is traffic, that is waves of people coming and going, that is schedules and appointments intersecting in every instant, there is an order. There is a fundamental, underlying pattern.

There is a rhythm.

It's the same rhythm we find in ourselves when we are most cognizant, when we are most alone and most aware. Out of every silence emerges the soft rhythm of breath. Under every bit of skin courses blood, following a patterned pulse. There is no escaping this regularity, this measured rise and fall, ebb and flow, come and go. It's everywhere. It is within ourselves and outside of ourselves. It defines our lives in every sense. It casts us out into the wider world, and then it gently brings us back to who we are.

The feeling of understanding the world, of feeling its undercurrents softly murmuring under every situation, every interaction, every occurrence, is incredible. It's knowing that nothing makes sense, yet finding sense in it. Letting go, watching your breathing even out and align with the movement of the world around you, letting everything just take care of itself, sitting back and knowing it will somehow be alright. Not knowing how, not knowing why, and not caring, that's what makes it so wonderful.

In moments like those, every sensation is elevated. Suddenly, when nothing matters at all, everything begins to be beautiful, to matter more, to carry such a powerful sense of beauty with it as it would never otherwise have possessed. Everything falls away, and what it leaves is simple and it is pure. It is gentle and it is forceful. It is cruel and it is kind, agonizing and merciful. It is so simple yet so complex, the two extremes coming together in a cacophony that is in itself a symphony.

It is rhythm. It is life.