We are on our evening walk, the sun has long set, cooling the air, the temperature drops making me huddle further into my jacket.
We decide to walk along the long overhead bridge. Hong kong’s overhead bridges are unique, the abundance of them, spanning and connecting over what seems like the entire precinct, the seemingly never-ending path branching off into different passages. And at this time of the night, the crowds lessen, people seem to relax, the usual energy of Hong Kong slows down to a languid pace.
Conversations float through the air creating a soft buzz around us. We walk leisurely, setting our own pace, our footsteps matching each other in tandem. We are not touching, not holding hands, yet there is no need to. The darkness of the night envelopes and holds us together as we converse about the mundanes of our day, our words bouncing off an invisible barrier that surrounds us, creating our own little pod travelling along the never-ending bridge.
In the monotony of our steps, as the cold wind touches my face, swirling around us, it settles me to stillness. We walk away and I leave behind the frustrations of the day, deregulating my mind, allowing my appreciation for this ordinary moment to come to the surface.
I am struck by the serendipitous convergence of our lives. The culmination of our ever so particular genetic make up and diverse experiences has somehow brought about this shared instant. It’s something so special, a true particularity of experience belonging solely to each individual that no one else can ever attain in this cosmos.
And yet, our transient reality makes everything vulnerable, fragile and fleeting. It will come and go, like all things in the past, present and future.
As we continue our walk, we are suspended above ground, The distance that separates us and the real ground of the earth becomes a measure of our permanence in this reality. And as the selfish human desire wells up inside of me, the desire to capture this moment.
But we keep walking, step by step, because we have to. So we move to a different moment, and I leave behind my helplessness to stop time.
My recent contemplation with morality, came from one of the nights where I was lying in bed alone trying to sleep. My mind started to spiral, thinking of having to lose my consciousness and never again be alive in this cosmos and reality.
Death and mortality seems like untouchable forbidden realm. With no answer in this reality. At times it seems senseless to think about something we will never know and cannot change.
But, perhaps it brings to the forefront the beauty of life, reminding us how to live well.
Mortality reminds me of how short our time is. Grounding us, it cuts through the noise, the frivolous thoughts at the same time rendering many things obsolete and infantile. Like adjusting the aperture of our camera, it sifts through the depth and layers of our life bringing out what is essential to our picture of existence. Only by leaving what is suitable in the background that we can truly focus and appreciate the beauty of the subject.
And very similar to the swirling and blurring while fine-tuning the aperture, we are often left feeling dizzy and overwhelmed by the experience of mortality.
But paradoxically, it slows time down.
While we are feeling besieged by life, reflecting on our mortality slows time down, just close to stillness, bringing to the surface our intricate connections to people and life. Revealing to us in the wider perspective, to be generous and gracious with our ambitions, love and affections, and that no matter how far up we fly, we are and will always be tethered to each other and our morality.
Reminding us that we are all transient.
Like the legends of history, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Abraham Lincoln, all whom had such a strong hold in history. But in fact they too were transient and lived in such a tiny sliver in the record of mankind.
It centres me, in my anxiousness and my helplessness, in my care for the world. Knowing that all things are built on something that came before. It bridges the individual to the world and other people, therefore my efforts can and will only be part of something larger that I cannot contain.
Ultimately teaching us to let go, to give away things we hold close to our soul and ego, in order to achieve something larger than the human imagination. In turn, relieves much of the burden in trying to reach an arrival of a horizon, that will ultimately always remain a horizon.
As we look at stories of the past, we seem to straddle the frontier between life and death.
We see the glory of the past and the unanticipated beauty in it’s ruin. That only in death and time, we are more of our true self and will come to the significance of our existence. We are like the pieces of the ever-changing puzzle, coming close to forming an image or a story, before breaking apart again to form another.
In our mortality, we are vulnerable and fragile, but all the more resilient and beautiful in our existence. Making us brave in facing difficulties, and facing ourselves. Only in our mortality do we treasure the beauty of life, allowing ourselves to stay close to who we truly are highlighting to us that we cannot and no longer want to be somebody else other than ourselves.
In Transit 
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