I had some time to kill after an errand and before a dinner yesterday.
…Not enough time to go home and too early to show up to dinner.
So I started driving around aimlessly when I found myself curiously turning into a cemetary.
I’m not quite sure why I decided to make that turn, but I leaned into the moment anyway.
I took my foot off the gas and allowed my car to creep its way slowly, slowly forward.
Past the gravestones… past the trees… past the flower dedications…
And I read the names.
I imagined the lives lived.
I saw laughing and crying, working and dancing, succeeding and failing…
But mostly, I saw loving and losing.
It took me about 20 minutes to slow roll through that cemetery…
And it resulted in one of the most profound meditations I’ve had in a while.
Each one of those gravestones represented a life lived by a person who had a consciousness just like us… who similarly and most likely felt like the main character of reality… who knew about mortality, of course, but never really believed it actually applied to them, too.
Maybe you should try it? Maybe it’d result in a similar experience for you? Maybe it’s exactly the kind of perspective sobering errand you could use in your life right about now?