Everything that is happening now happened in the past. Everything that will happen is happening now.

There is no exception.

Every iteration of reality is a repeat of the past, and is the sum total of new manifestations and recombinations of ‘old’ scenes from different time-spaces.

A single hair that’s been wrested from its root by gusty winds and falls onto the bench at a bus stop in New York City is a leaf torn from a tree branch in a scuffle between a bear and a wolf. That scuffle happened aeons ago in a different time-space and that leaf glided into a brook that ran between a row of cottages and a dense forest.

Scenes change. Characters change. Details change. But the mother script never does.

Knowing this won’t make any difference to us. We will not not do what we will be doing, because that which drives our thought and action will drive our thought and action without fail. Free will is an illusion.

My being hit by these ideas and writing them down at this moment is a repeat of something that happened in the past: a patter of rain tapping on the window, each raindrop unique and storied, each tap an eloquent voice to tell its tale.

This time, I’m the conduit that conveys their decoded messages.

Next time, these words of mine become wordless raindrops again…

or the rustle of leaves, the whisper of bamboos, the swish of meteors…

or the great silence that says nothing, that says all.