On The Verge

To be on the verge is like being poised on a narrow ledge. The potency can be gauged when we juxtapose that instant with what may or may not happen or what really does or does not happen. With hindsight we acknowledge how critical was the moment when we were struggling for breath and about to be snuffed out, when we were plummeting down in a plane momentarily gone berserk, or that instant when we were hurtling in a speeding uncontrollable car.

There is the tragedy of being on the verge of success and failing, or the good fortune of being touched by failure and escaping its grasp — like a shower of droplets which dampen, but do not drench. These moments have to be savored or brooded over later, for, like trauma, the impact is a necessary corollary to what happened or didn’t.

To have been so near and not arrived occasions grief and regret. Ironically, fruition brings euphoria, which swamps the memory of the tautness prior to success.

A flower about to bloom has the purity and innocence of dawn, the vulnerability of a baby. Its unfurled head could have been wrenched from the stem or plucked to be gifted as a token of love. If it didn’t happen, it was followed by the flower’s lascivious flirtations with the wind.

Being on the brink of comprehension is akin to daylight seeping out from under the skin of twilight to be stamped all over the earth.

The position of stars, the mood of the powers , the minute the second, when on the verge of being born, charters the scale and quality of life.

A baby about to emerge from the womb comes wrapped in the enigma of life. The first gasp and his tale unfurls as decreed by fate, his own actions in the future or by what you will. But it could have been strangled by its own umbilical cord. That one moment of uncertainty — when everything stood still, when it could have been this or that — can never be under-valued.

Like waves building up a momentum, our thought processes, experiences, circumstances climax to that crucial moment before pronouncing a final decree.

Words of love, anger revelation, regret come to the tip of the tongue are swallowed into oblivion or trip out with negative or positive results. But that instant, when on the verge of expression, is significant, because it is pregnant with possibilities. That crucial moment is like being propelled to the top by desperation, hopelessness, helplessness, love and hate and then mustering courage to jump from a height.

So many tragedies and comedies stem from the one moment, which might ripen or go awry — a tragedy might be averted, a windfall might be lost.

In meditation there is that one instant when you plunge deep down into yourself and reach the inner core; on the verge of sustaining it, a frivolous thought intervenes and frustrates the profound experience.

Standing on the crossroads and deliberating on the direction to take is, in that instant, the potent creator of one’s fate. The choice made, one faces the music hummed out by that irretrievable moment.

Ironically, we often value life, moments, people only on the verge of losing them.

Ignored, forgotten is that one moment, when we are on the verge because it gets swept into a larger moment into which we fit the frame of our practical existence.