Uncertainty

Uncertainty | September 21, 2025

Everywhere, and Kathmandu, Nepal, 2025

How do you know when you have arrived? I am caught in a perpetual sense of being in the process of transport, as though my life is being shuffled along an eternal conveyor which transports me from the past to the future yet neglects to announce my arrival at any particular point. I am the eternal traveller, cursed to yearn for that which is still just beyond my sight, my reach, and the current location of my feet. This applies to several aspects of life and not just travel in the traditional sense. (The one thing I can say is that it doesn't really apply to material possessions. So, that's good, I guess.) My occupation stifles me, and I aspire to further myself in a way that I can't articulate or see a path toward obtaining. My achievements follow behind me, and remind me of their effervescence. Once obtained, they are over, done, gone, their memory a reminder that something new needs to be identified to work toward. The places I have been and the things I have seen... I have learned that once I have arrived, the desire for more hasn't stayed behind. 

I really liked spinning the prayer wheels and dinging the little bells that adorned the thousands and thousands of shrines throughout Kathmandu. Big temples, little shrines, huge prayer wheels, tiny bells, Hindu shrines, Buddhist temples, ornate effigies, rocks in the pavement with nothing more than chalk covering their surface. I feel them calling out to me from 10,000 miles away, asking me to return and play them once again. I was told that ringing the bell signals to the god of the shrine, "I am here, listen to my prayer..." and that spinning the prayer wheel is an act of physical meditation, a force of movement with a finger or your hand or your body which sets you on the Dharma path by your participation in the turning of the mantra. 

I have never felt the calling to participate in the act of grounding in such a concrete, strong, or compelling way in any other place in my life. 

The enjoyment of discovery was immediate, but the distance of reflection informs me of why the wheels and bells have such a hold on my psyche. For the eternal traveller, the wanderer cursed to perpetual searching, the bells sing out their affirmation that one has finally, finally arrived. With the tinkling or gonging reverberating into the humid atmosphere, indeed, there was no place else I could have been in that moment. 

I yearn to return. I must return. I think it's necessary for my health and wellbeing. I feel that there will be sacrifices to do so, and I don't know yet what they are, but I can guess. 

How to do it? When? Poe-like, I am plagued by the bells that once sounded so sweetly in the air, but now haunt my memory and remind me of the satisfaction found in a place now so distant. 

The wanderer was never defeated, only happily quieted by the rolling Dharmas and singing chimes of arrival. I promise to myself: I will be there once again, I will feel the rare feeling of true location, and I will send the sounds of my arrival back into the ether for the universe to hear. I must, I must, I must.