YogiWrites

We love tidy stories: life starts, life ends, ticket punched. But what if that neat ending — death — is something we made up to make sense of the messy middle? If creation never really stops, then what we call “destruction” might just be another kind of making. That idea wakes something stubborn in me: maybe life isn’t a straight line from A to Z, but an endless improvisation in which we mislabel the music as silence when the tune changes.

The Night I Tried to Measure an Ocean

A few years back I sat on a train platform in the rain, listening to someone argue on their phone about whether the world would end. The speaker used words like “final” and “irreversible” like they were shopping for groceries. I watched a kid jump puddles, unbothered. The adult wanted closure; the kid didn’t know it was supposed to be afraid.

That image — the adult insisting on endings and the child refusing to agree — stuck. I realized most of us are grown-ups who keep asking the wrong question: we obsess about the end because it gives structure to the mess. The kid didn’t need structure. He was busy making puddles into boats.

Who Says What’s Destruction?

Think about it: when a forest burns, new life bursts out of ash. When your relationship collapses, you sometimes discover a self you didn’t know existed. Destruction is usually labeled by those who lost comfort, not by the process itself. The “end” we fear is often the doorway to a different kind of becoming.

Creation and destruction are not binary enemies — they are improvisers sharing the same stage. The caterpillar unravels itself to become a butterfly; no one slaps a ‘tragic’ label on that. Later the butterfly becomes lunch, and humans call that “sad.” Nature doesn’t judge. Humans do. We invented endings because it helps our anxious brains categorize and sleep.

If death is a concept, shaped by culture and fear, then life’s work is not “progressing toward death” but learning how to keep creating in different forms. The spiritual path here isn’t about escaping cycles — it’s about getting good at change.

The Many Verses Inside You (and Me)

We are multiverses of thought: a corporate mind, a lover, a frightened child, a fierce rebel. Each miniature self imagines different beginnings and different endings. Which one is right? Trick question — none and all. Reality isn’t interested in consensus; it’s busy being many. To live fully is to entertain all those verses without making any one of them your prison.

Attachment is the poor man’s religion. We think holding tight will keep things whole. But all holding does is freeze a living process into cold jewelry. We cling to roles, labels, relationships, habits — and then we wonder why life feels like an overcrowded museum. Freedom is not lack of care; it’s the ability to love what you have while accepting it will change.

Small Practices That Aren’t Spiritual Gimmicks

1. Notice the language. When you say “I lost” or “it’s over,” pause. Could it be “it changed”? Changing the verb shifts the whole map.
2. Practice friendly curiosity. When an ending arrives, ask: “What does this free me to become?” instead of “Who stole my map?”
3. Micro-rituals of letting go. Burn the unhelpful note, delete the old photo, make a small funeral for a version of yourself. Symbolic acts accelerate mental re-patterning.
4. Build a habit of mini-creations. Make something small — a poem, a playlist, a 5-minute stretch ritual. Creation is contagious.
5. Training in discomfort. Sit with a small loss for 10 minutes a day without distraction. Notice the urge to fix, and let it pass.

Life Isn’t a Project — It’s an Ongoing Craft

If you think life’s only meaning is to reach an “end,” you’re making it a performance review. Life is craftwork: messy, iterative, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ridiculous. We don’t graduate; we keep arriving. The goal is not to avoid endings but to become fluent in transitions.

You don’t have to be a monk or a mystic to see this. You just need to stop building your identity like a museum exhibit and start treating it like a shared workshop — where failures are informative, attachments are tools you can set down, and destruction is sometimes a creative strategy wearing a scary mask.

A Tiny Prayer for the Restless

May you be brave enough to watch your own endings without flinching. May you become curious enough to find the seed in every ash. And if you get swept into the human habit of naming everything as “final,” remember: labels are opinions, not laws.

If I were an atom — hell, even better — if I were a puddle-boat child on the platform again, I’d make more noise. That’s the real practice: making noise while the world keeps rearranging itself.