There is a sign on an old road just off of a nearby interstate. It is rusty and damaged, like time and the elements took an unhealthy interest in it. Don’t be fooled. Nature, in all her beauty and glory, can also be a selfish bully sometimes, in her attempt to break down man-made structures and forfeit them back to the earth. It was on this road, in front of this sign, that I had an epiphany. And while mental clarity doesn’t come to me often, I paid attention this time, since I was already in stop-to-smell-the-roses mode.
I often think that the answers to everything are right in front of us, there for us to see them, if we just open our eyes…the key to life, or happiness, or spirituality–all of it. We are blinded by life, by the everyday mundanity of the grind. But as I stood in front of this sign, with weeds and grass crawling up it’s oxidized pole which supported the grotesque, dented, and bulbous piece of metal on which the message had been printed, I read the message with absolute clarity, with pinpoint accuracy as to what it was telling me. My eyes were open when I read it, open in a way that is fleeting, open to the depth of what it means to be human. For a split-second I was one with the universe, one with nature and life. I beheld all of what this whole thing was about. It rushed into me so quickly, I got dizzy from the idea. The emotion and clearness of it rippled through my entire body, and I ached with the knowledge, drained with the effort of comprehension. I literally stumbled back and lost my balance.
Simple, eloquent and rich was the understanding, it had rocked me to my absolute core. I sat there in the sand and rocks, under the sign, and snapped back out of the knowledge, lost the ability to understand the message I had so clearly understood only seconds before. I had been on the precipice of understanding. On the brink of solidifying the reason of our existence. I imagine the insight, or at least the glimpse of what I experienced, was akin to what a Buddhist monk toils for. That one-ness with the universe is a humbling experience, the understanding of it far too much for mere humans, with our imperfect minds, to grasp. And I grasped it, if only for seconds, I grasped it. I almost cried when I realized it left me. The feeling was like déjà vu. It was there and gone in an instant, and it was so abstract, I can’t even begin to explain it or accurately recount the details of what it was to understand the volumes of knowledge and peace and profundity it evoked in me. And just like that, it was lost, slipping through my outstretched fingers, like trying to catch water with a net, grasping at answers with an imperfect tool and momentarily holding it, raw and powerful, but only long enough to feel it slip through.
I wanted to curse, lamenting my inability to retain the awesome beauty of understanding I just beheld. When I looked back up at the sign, the doorway had closed, the tattered and rusty sign now a simple marker for instruction. It read, in big, white letters “STOP.”
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