What do you want most in your life that you don’t have?

Happy 2024, Happy New Year!

In one episode of Living the Classical Life, they have young pianist Yujia Wang as the guest.

In the middle of the interview, the host asked Yujia: “What do you want most in your life that you don’t have?”

Unlike other questions that Yujia answered without hesitation, she was silent for a few seconds for this one and replied “Lots of things… I mean also lots of, maybe, feelings?” Yujia’s voice and expressions suddenly started to get serious (very rare for her dynamite personality ), “or just a certain quality of life, a certain character I can’t have, because of the way of my lifestyle.”

Missing of “lots of […] feelings”…

I’ve always envied the lives of musicians. It is such a different life, flowing through different times and spaces, playing different roles, and experiencing the extremes of joy and sorrow in a short period, the ultimate goodness and beauty of humanity, along with pain and struggle. I’ve also known that I can’t be a musician because I am already too old. It is no longer possible for me to become someone whose world is filled with music. Even if I desire to express myself through music, I lack the time to practice. But I’m still a little surprised when the top musician in the world whose entire career is to tell stories of different emotions, feelings, and characters through music said that her life missed lots of feelings.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. Everyone can only live their life once, in a certain space, in a certain time, and a certain lifestyle. Yujia is already a successful musician, she is living a classical life and can’t be someone else: a shepherd accompanied by a flock in Northern Ireland, a native fisherman living on a remote island in the South Pacific, or even an Afghan soldier striving to survive in the midst of gunfire and bullets…

We read books, we listen to music, we watch movies, we visit places, trying to get a sense of different ways of living and hoping to transcend the limitations of time and space in a short period, entering another world—a world rich in imaginative creativity, with profound historical and cultural heritage, and exhilarating activities. But in the end, everyone only has one way of living at a moment, as it says in Buddhism “The only thing we really have is now.” Even now is transient, nothing is permanent, the world is made of events, not things

The world is made of events, not things

All this seems so obvious! We’ve always known it. Tell me something new! I used to think the same way until I read a book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying recently and realized that I had been overlooking the difficulty of understanding this statement.

“Have you actually understood, and realized, the truth of impermanence? Have you so integrated with your every thought, breath, and the movement that your life has been transformed? Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If your answer ‘yes’ to both of these, then you have really understood impermanence.”

It takes practice, and I’m also working on it. Happy 2024, Happy New Year!

Resources:

• Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, 1992