Eternity in a Moment

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

I had another one of those 'moments' tonight.

Where a scene, or an experience turns into something else.

A moment where you are reminded of how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things.

I was sitting in a beautiful bar, on another hot, Darwin night, with two people who have become very close to me in my time in Darwin, Tom and Gina. We were drinking beer and having a really good conversation, while looking out at the sea.

From the distance, across the ocean, there was a flash of white. This started slowly, but became more and more frequent. The temperature dropped, somewhat eerily, and the palm trees starting blowing in a wind which seemed to come from nowhere. Then the thunder came.

Watching this beautiful storm rolling in across the ocean was something which I will never forget.

A moment where everything comes together, and for a moment you see this world we find ourselves in all its glory and mystery.

And you realise that we are nothing but ants, crawling around, caught up in a web of regrets about the past, concerns about the future. Emotions take over - anger, frustration, boredom, jealousy, sadness.

But for a split second, in the face of this spellbinding storm, I became detached from everything

And just simply 'was' Immersed in a moment.

In this madness, there are moments of clarity, moments of beauty.

And it's moments like these that make it all worthwhile.