The camera attempts to capture a moment- a fleeting second in the swirling whirlpools of time. It captures that moment and immortalizes it, framing it in eternity. Days may pass, years and even decades, but that picture will hang on the wall, making you travel back in time involuntarily. Suddenly, you will be thrust back in time and will feel as if you’re actually witnessing that moment all over again, like you did, all those years ago. It is, as if, no time has elapsed between then and now. Perhaps, that feeling is transient, but you cannot deny it.

  The camera captures what the mind perceives, what the eye sees. It enables us to hold on to the image formed by the thousands of electric impulses that zoomed from the optic nerve to the brain at that second. But, more often than not, we associate many moments with an emotion. Looking at the vast, all-encompassing cerulean ocean or the towering trees in a forest, I feel an unexplainable calm and peace. I question my existence and what it truly means to be alive and human. I thank God silently. The camera can make us hold onto the physical beauty of that moment, but the way we felt, the feeling of fast dawning realization of the insignificance of our minuscule existence and problems is somewhere lost in the sands of passing time. By no means do I mean to say that, the impact made by every human is in vain, but only that when I stand facing the miraculous creations of Nature, unfathomable to Man, there is a profound sense of understanding regarding the role of humanity in context to God and Nature, which, unfortunately, cannot be held on to in some physical form, for future contemplation.

I cannot articulate how grateful I am to be born a human because the greatest gift that has been bestowed on us is the ability to FEEL. Feel not only with our skin but soak in the aura of every moment with each part of our bodies. Most of us, unlike Ron Weasley (as was very rightfully put by Hermione), do NOT have ‘the emotional range of a teaspoon’. Have you ever stopped to think about the plethora of emotions that we experience in a single moment? Each minute in a day stimulates different thoughts which complement and contradict.

Gazing at the stars makes me wonder of the enormity of this universe. It is perennially expanding; its size is beyond our contemplation. I think about how I am less than a speck in this cosmos, how barely a few hundred, know of my existence, how inconsequential I seem in this scientific amazing awesomeness. It makes me feel safe in a way, that however much importance I might give to others or they might give to me, we will one day we swallowed by the galaxy and help in paving the way for a new world, perhaps millennia in the future.

 It makes me ponder on how lightly we take our lives, how some simply toss it away since their minds are not strong enough to contain this body made up of the stars themselves. I worry about immaterial examinations. Then it strikes me, that it will have ZERO impact on the rest of the Earth, let alone the universe. I feel protected in the sense that whatever I do, the universe will continue to stay, even when decades of generations after me will pass on, nurturing a new future.

Our bodies are beyond miraculous, a brilliant network of neurons and organs and tissues and cells. It is a work of art, of whose magnitude, anything is yet to be reproduced by anyone alive. But the more I think about it, the more concrete my conclusion becomes that it is, but a tangible receiver of sensory emotion, a physical embodiment to mask the mastery of the mind.

There are five very well known senses- sight, sound, taste, smell and feel. But, has it ever happened to you- that of having felt something more, a feeling indescribable, delivered by not one, but multiple senses, some which may not even be included in the above five? Have you ever felt that, perhaps, for a single moment, all of your senses were co-existing, and in harmony, were one? Have you ever been reminded of a person, a place or just a random memory by the whiff of a smell? You cannot quite put your finger on it, but it is lingering there, nonetheless. In recent years, I have had a wondrous awakening of senses, most often, when I breathe in the beauty of Nature. She surprises me constantly, always changing shape, colour and form across cities and countries, making me in a sense, feel detached. Unhinged; from mundane routine; the possibility of grief, war, loss, poverty and disease, temporarily erased. It comes and goes before I can hold on to it, a pinprick of light. It is as quick as the waves which embrace the beach, for an instant and then recede. But it is there. Pure and utter peace. With oneself and everything around me. It is during these treasured moments that I ponder over the true meaning of being alive, my aspirations and dreams, what drives everybody to wake up in the morning and get out of bed, what is my purpose whilst I’m here. Perhaps, a more prolonged version of what I experience is true meditation. For the time being, I’m satisfied.  

With this sense of blissful awareness, there comes happiness unparalleled. A joy that may dim during toil and hardship; but which we’ll always succeed in recapturing when amidst Nature and looking at the vast, expansive sky. As Anne Frank very accurately describes:

“I feel that everything will be alright when I look at the sky.”

I pray that everybody is as lucky as I am to experience this harmony of thought, the medley of emotion. It overwhelms me, yet I long for a little more each time. Often, I feel a sore disappointment when I realize that not even the most advanced of gizmos can capture what we FEEL at any given moment. We can hang a pretty picture and record sound and bottle smell. What we cannot do, is capture the essence of the feeling. We can only reminisce with a smile and rejoice with happy memories embedded in our souls. 

And that perhaps, is the magic of being alive.

~h.