The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty wrote Yoshida Kenkō, a 14th-century Japanese Buddhist monk.
The sakura, or cherry blossom. The trees are famously fleeting. They bloom for only a week or two, and then the petals are gone. Other flowers — plum blossoms — last longer. Why go to such great lengths to cultivate something as fragile as the cherry blossom?
Because beauty lies in its own vanishing. Life is ephemeral. Everything we know and love will one day cease to exist, ourselves included. That is life’s one certainty. The cherry blossom is lovely not despite its transience but because of it. This has always been the case.
The pandemic has driven home our own transience. And while it may be too much to ask to celebrate this truth under such dire circumstances, we can learn to tolerate the unknown, and perhaps even catch glimpses of the beauty underlying life’s uncertainties.
