LIVING

Late Sunday morning I was passing through Iwagasaki, a little town near me. I have a 'thinking place' there that I hadn't visited in quite a while.

Up a little cobblestone road is a small cemetary next to a small park alongside a small river. Always peaceful, always tranquil, always empty. It only takes five minutes to walk around the park, but the stream running through it always holds my attention for much longer.

I spent ten minutes in the park then headed back to the car with thoughts of lunch on my mind. Crossing the park that snowless damp morning I caught a scent that took me to another time. The faint aroma of burning incense gently carried over from the cemetary. It added a another dimension to the already impressive looking grounds. Damp grass, new shiny black headstones side-by-side with old grey mossy head-stones. A dark ominous sky sillouetting the large bare trees as they watched over the resting places of the dead.

I turned around and walked in to the cemetary. I admired the fresh flowers on some of the graves. An old lady in the distance silently prayed at one of the graves. I leaned against a tree and, for the first time in a long time, put things into perspective.

"Let lunch wait half an hour. Forget about rushing home to the 'important' tasks of the day. Stop planning tonight's socialising. Forget all that crap and just chill for a minute", I told myself. And, surprisingly, I did. And it felt great. It felt so good to take a time-out from all the usual tedious, unimportant nonsense occupying my mind. To take a time-out from this so-called 'life' and to actually enjoy being alive.