A friend wrote:
A cicada may spend seventeen years beneath the earth, only to emerge for a single month beneath the summer sun. Its brief appearance is not a tragedy—it is the fulfillment of its nature.
So too with us. We arise for a fleeting moment in the vastness of time, like a wave rising from and returning to the sea. We know only this small season of existence, unaware of the countless ages that came before us and the innumerable worlds that will unfold after we are gone.
Our lives are but one note in the infinite symphony of the universe—brief, precious, and complete in themselves. Remember this when life feels heavy: no joy is permanent, but neither is sorrow. Every season passes. What is difficult today will also pass, just as every wave returns to the ocean.
Yet, from the standpoint of Advaita, the wave never truly left the ocean. Birth and death belong to the appearance, not to Reality. The Self neither comes nor goes, neither emerges nor disappears. It is the timeless Awareness in which all seasons arise and dissolve. Realize That, and you discover that what you truly are has never been born, has never suffered, and can never perish.
I replied:
I Can Neither Laugh Nor Cry
by Whoever Is Writing This
Tired I am, tired I am
No, not in the psychological sense
Though that, too, ever so slightly,
But much more in this sense:
I have given up all hope
That my mind can ever find the truth
Isn’t it the mind that hides the truth
Then where is the need for any explanation
Of whatever kind as to what is ignorance
What is truth, what is Brahman
Let whatever is be whatever it is
I am tired of myself, I am tired of Brahman
I am tired of words, tired of explanations
Tired of whatever cicadas that there be
And whatever seasons that they pass through
All words, words, mere words, O Kalyana Mitra
Drop this search, drop these explanations
Come sit with me on this shore where
There is not a care whether one exists or not
And what happens to this body, mind, and heart
Such caring never made an iota of difference
To what does happen to any body-mind-heart
Why care about what does not exist though it seems to
This body-mind-heart, let it all be, let it be
But these are also words, so see how problematic ’tis.
Know Thyself 