King Appolus Chu
Recently, I developed interest in astronomy. The beauty of the galaxies and the mysteries up there are mind blowing. Onestriking thing I noticed about the universe is that everything in the universe is in a constant motion. The earth is rotating on its axis while revolving around the sun. Our entire solar system is spinning around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy (our galaxy). The Milky Way galaxy is spinning through the edgeless universe. Nothing in Space has any permanent position. The result of this constant motion is time and change.
Different events in life follow one another. The termination of one event ushers in the beginning of another – a phase off and a phase in, a point of ascension and a point of descent, a cause and effect pattern, a point of departure and a point of termination in every cosmological and ontological process. Your waking up in the morning terminates your all night sleep/rest and ushers in daybreak of activity in your life.
The End to everything we are or do in life is waiting. It is standing right in front of us. Life constantly moves from one state to another. The End is a change of state of life and life’s affairs. Contrary to the popular opinion that the End is coming, I think the End is not coming. It is already there and waiting. We walk to the End.
This change of state is a constant recurring phenomenon in nature along our line of activities in life – life to death, state of good life to a state when that good life is rewarded, a state of poverty to riches, pain to joy, powerlessness to powerfulness; a bad life to a state of punishment, a state of good healthy today to sickness tomorrow and incapacitation, a state of strength/might to weakness/helplessness, a state of youthfulness to old age/frailty, a state of active duty/work to retirement from work, sack or demotion; a state of powerfulness to powerlessness, a state of plenty to emptiness, lack or solitude; a state of riches to penury, a state when happiness is replaced by pain and sorrow, a state of arrogance to shame; a state when cheating, looting and tyranny will be replaced by the season of regret, weakness, hard times, need and dependence; a state when an oppressor gazes blankly in regret and wishes there were a second chance while facing mockery, a state when glory is lost and shame and pain follow, from a state where all the riches we acquire here are left behind into the silence of death.
You are impermanent and everything you are or have is impermanent. So, why are you being carried away by your position and what you have? The affairs of life are like a journey. Every step we take is a step closer to the end of the journey. The first step into a journey is actually the first step to its end. Don’t think you just got started with that first step, and that you have all the time in the world or that your journey is forever. You are here today. Tomorrow, you won’t be here, someone else will. Today, you are at the top of the ladder and you are being carried away by the glory of the top of the ladder. That ladder does not run up into the sky and into the vast edgeless Universe, so, tomorrow you may be at the bottom of the ladder facing the harsh realities of being at the bottom. Yesterday, some people were the timbers and calibres, the cabals, the mafia, the inner circle, the powers that be, the wealthy, the power brokers, the sole voices, the supreme heads, the VIPs, the caucus and the Who is Who. And today, they are nobody, irrelevant, relegated, ridiculed, waived aside carelessly, and some are dead and forgotten. And the nobodies of yesterday are somebodies of today.
The footprints you leave behind on this journey are what you will be remembered for by those coming behind you no matter how short or long you walk this path of life. Humanity deserves your selfless contribution. Make who you are, what you have or where you are right now count positively on the society the much you can. At the end of your journey that is what you will look back at and feel fulfilled. What you write your name on in history determines the length of time it stays on the surface of the earth. Write it on yourself and it goes into the grave with you. Write it on humanity and it stays forever. Your life is an airplane and you are the sole pilot in it. How you pilot this life continues to produce effects that will keep shaping this life. If you pilot it wrongly, you will crash. If you pilot excellently, you will land safely in life. The question you need to ask yourself is: How will ‘your End’ end?
*Culled from “The End Is Waiting”, a book by King Appolus Chu
