Sometimes I’ll be walking in the woods and the wind will dislodge a leaf from a tall tree. As it starts to fall, I notice it.
I watch it tumble end over end, or rotate, or spin, see the path it takes — maybe it hits a branch or two on the way down. But inevitably it reaches the ground, landing with an imperceptible BOOM among the millions of other leaves that have completed similar journies … and for a moment, I know something about that leaf.
There’s millions of leaves around me, but THIS leaf, I have a connection with. I watched it, I saw how it got where it is. For a moment, I am the leaf. That leaf.
But then the absurdity of it cracks open. I blink and the millions of leaves come flooding back. I lose sight of THE leaf, my leaf, and am engulfed by the totality of the forest.
Maybe this life of mine is the same. Tumbling and identification arise, fleetingly, from wholeness.
