The Cycles of Life

Saturday evening I went to the wedding of a man who sits in my men’s group. We celebrated on the slopes of Haleakala as the sun set, looking across the island to the cloud covered West Maui Mountains, and across the Pacific to the island of Lanai.

On Sunday afternoon we went to a Celebration of Life ceremony for a dear friend who passed away quite suddenly. Many, many family and friends came to share in honour the recently departed, sharing stories of her life late into the night.

Celebrations of two stages of life…and death.

All of this came for me on the back of an experience while sitting in my men’s group last Thursday evening. The weather was warm and we were sitting outside in a circle, the only light coming from a trail of lights hanging around the edge of the roof that covered the balcony that we were sitting on. With the sun having recently set the lights were attracting moths, and a couple of geckos had arrived to try and catch their dinner - chasing after a moth whenever one flew by.

I was sitting next to a pillar which supported the roof and noticed a small cockroach scurrying up the pillar. At the top of the pillar were of couple of geckos. Every time that I looked up the cockroach was that little bit higher up the pillar. I was very conscious of where it was headed. My guess is that the cockroach was just aiming to get to the light? I on the other hand just saw it heading into the jaws of a gecko. Sure enough, I eventually looked up to see its front end in a gecko’s mouth and its legs kicking from underneath the shell of its wings. I looked up a little later and they were both gone, gecko and cockroach, nowhere to be seen.

In that moment the analogy couldn’t have been clearer to me. We are all running towards the same goal, our own demise. Many of us do not see the when of its arrival. We only see that towards which we are moving, our next goal…and maybe like the cockroach, we will never arrive there? I wish that I was able to hold that awareness in my everyday life. I believe that everything would appear in sharper relief and I would choose my actions in life to have more meaning.

While I am far from living the insight of that evening, that little cockroach gave me a good reminder. Thank you to that little bug, and blessings on it.