Swept up in a breathless story
as a child,
I was shocked to learn that all the events so far
were just the prologue
of a larger, grander story.
But how did the people in the story know it’s only the prologue? I wondered. And not the most important part?
They didn’t, of course.
How do we know what’s the prologue? And what’s the most important part?
Is there a main story?
Characters and settings more important than the ones that came before?
A larger section of the book that needed a beginning,
a foundation?
Or is all of this simply a series of beginnings,
running off tirelessly
into a future that never arrives
because there is no main event
other than in the minds of individualized beings
such as we?
What is the main event for Earth?
For the universe?
For God?
How terrifying,
to imagine that our story is only the prologue
to what really matters—
if anything really matters at all!—
to imagine that the reader needs us only for context
and not for substance.
Yet what elegance
in a system that knows only renewal,
only flux,
only beginnings.
What possibility!
embracing samsara 