Vanishing

Sometimes, life offers us a fleeting moment of beauty but only if we’re paying attention. I was out walking my dogs one evening, winding down from the day, when I happened to glance up just as a shooting star cut across the sky. It was gone in an instant. If I had been staring down at my phone, distracted, I would’ve missed it entirely. That single moment stayed with me, not because it was extraordinary, but because it reminded me of how much we miss when we’re not present.

Lately, I’ve been trying to embrace the idea of aware no mono, a Japanese phrase that captures the bittersweet appreciation of things that are beautiful because they’re impermanent. The haiku in this post, “Vanishing,” is my attempt to reflect on that feeling. It’s about those subtle, transient wonders that brush against our lives and are gone before we can fully grasp them. And maybe that’s the point: not to hold on, but to witness and feel deeply, even if only for a moment.