Seize the Day in Your Own Special Way 

When the jet stream currents are just right, storms in the Sahara send dust as far as my home in the Southern USA. This makes for spectacular sunsets, as the tiny particles refract and reflect the declining rays of the sun like countless tiny mirrors, conjuring fresh colors, shades, and hues in true Impressionist fashion. One of those storms has reached my park, and I’m here at sunrise this morning because what is true of sunset is true of sunrise, as well. The dust tickles the back of my throat and makes my lungs ache, but the glorious sky makes that minor irritation worth it.

During meditation, I nearly always close my eyes all the way. This time, however, I am so reluctant to lose sight of the beautiful sky that I begin my session with my lids set to slits. This creates a warm feeling, like standing before a roaring fire, turning the inside of my head a comforting orange. Dust can cause coughing, which is not so good for meditating, so I breathe very carefully, taking shallow sips of air through my nose and relaxing all my muscles so that my oxygen demands are as low as can be. As before, once my breathing is shallow enough, it feels as if I’m breathing through my skin, and only a couple of times a minute at that.

After a time, I find myself in the immortal world, ready to meet my mentor. There is no floating this time, no high-altitude views, no cavorting through the clouds like a drunken eagle. Nor is there a rapid transit across oceans, archipelagos, forest tracts, jungles, or deserts. Instead, I simply find myself standing on a vast plain of nothing but salted sand, vultures circling overhead. The morning heat is crushing, the air is still, and the substrate leaves me nauseated and dizzy. The sweat at my temples evaporates before it reaches my cheeks. I cannot float and I cannot fly and the sand squeaks beneath the white cotton soles of my black Chinese slippers as I walk. Schlieren makes the horizon shimmer. A slow-moving herd of kudu tells me I’m back in Africa.

The heavy edges of my monk robes drag in the sand, the salt dusting the black fabric. I loosen the frog buttons but feel no cooler. I head for a distant waterhole. Minutes blend into hours. A Bateleur eagle prances at the shore, black-and-tan wings flapping, red beak slurping water. I’m obviously back in Africa, but I’m not exactly sure where. Jackals eye tiny springbok. Wildebeest raise a cloud of dust and push impala and zebras from the shore.

A giant Nile crocodile breaks the surface and snags a springbok in his jaws. In the little antelope’s eyes, I see the terror, pain, desperation, and finally the resignation that is the fate of all the world’s prey, whether they be turtles or tigers, songbirds or children. The crocodile performs its death roll. Delicate hooves point skyward, and strips of meat and skin appear in the water between flowers of blood. Far away, elephants trod along a line of green. I cross the salty plain toward them and eventually find rocks and trees. I check a flat rock for scorpions or snakes, then take a seat. I survey the brutal landscape.

“Greetings, Monk,” says a breathy, sensual voice. “How do you like Namibia?”

I look around but see no turtle. I figure I will before long.

“Thanks,” I answer. “I wasn’t sure where I was. So far, it’s a bit daunting.”

“I smell that on you. Gazelle turds, too, if I’m to be honest.”

“Hard to avoid while crossing the salt flat.”

“I know. I brought you in that way because I wanted you to get a good feel for the place.”

“Excuse me, but I actually don’t see you.”

“Right here,” she says, extending her head and limbs. She’s so well-camouflaged and minuscule, I wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of the landscape if not for the sudden movement. She has a pointed beak and a flat, reddish-brown shell with light rings around the centers of her scutes. She is a Berger’s Cape tortoise, locally known as Nama padloper, which means “road walker” in Afrikaans.

“You’re so tiny,” I say.

“Smallest of the tortoises, and better suited to this unforgiving land than you are, Monk.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“I consume only what I need,” she says, blinking against the bright sun. “Imagine how much better the world would be if your kind did the same. Instead, you indulge every wish and whim, consuming everything in sight, ingesting it in one way or another and excreting it back into the land.”

“You’re mostly right, I think. Although some of us don’t do this. The Masai, for example. Do you know them?”

“I don’t.”

“Really? They’re an African tribe. They move constantly in search of food and resources and own only what they can easily carry—a spear, a few cooking pots, maybe some medicinal herbs, their clothes, headgear for the women. Their lives are rich in relationships and experience and their connection with the natural world around them; material excess is not for them, nor are they obsessed with the false security tied to the idea of abundance.”

“Namibian tribes like the Nama, the San, and the Caprivians used to live that way before white people showed up—in pure accordance with nature.”

“Speaking of nature, come up here and sit by me. It’s awkward talking down to an immortal.”

“Will you protect me? I’ve always wanted to get up that high, but Namibia is full of turtle-eating eagles.”

“Of course I’ll protect you. The glare of the sun off my bald head alone will disorient any predatory bird.”

“Ha,” she says.

Gently, I lift her. “Wonderful view!” she cries in a voice as dry and tiny as a cricket breaking wind. “We turtles are conservative. We experience things deeply and completely, but most of the time, we live minimalist lives with modest desires, longevity our only ambition. We don’t unnecessarily expose ourselves to peril. I suppose I’m a bit of a turtle rebel, though, because I simply don’t see the point of a life lived in constant fear—”

“The immortal turtles I’ve met haven’t been so fearful,” I interrupt. “I think you have a war going on inside you because you chose to incorporate in such a small body.”

“What a wise monk you are,” she answers.

As she settles into the center of my palm, a spiral of energy develops between the acupuncture point called Laogong and the spot on her plastron that once tethered her in her egg. I may be learning from her, but she is feeding on me.

“I know what you’re doing,” I say with a smile.

“The trees are not so tall as I thought they were,” she says, gazing up at a tableau of leaves and clouds and pretending not to hear me. “But they are still just lovely. Tell me, what do you suppose drives the human desire to own things?”

“The mistaken belief that ownership will fill the emptiness we feel inside.”

“Why do you feel so empty?”

“We’ve lost our way,” I say. “Given free rein, we imagine all the ways we could be better, then flagellate ourselves when we fall short. The space between who we are and who we think we should be creates a vacuum into which we fall. Falling, we grasp. Grasping, we shop. Shopping, we buy what we don’t need, most often with money we don’t have. The resulting debt makes us desperate. Desperate, we need instant gratification—sex, social media, more shopping.”

“Who can have and be everything they can imagine?” the little immortal challenges me. “Where do humans even get the idea that they have to be exceptional or special, as if just being alive on this amazing planet isn’t enough?”

The fervor with which she asks this question gets me to thinking of the long-suffering lives of turtles. I wonder whether—through copulating or laying eggs or basking in the sun or enjoying a bloom of delicious wildflowers or a sudden surfeit of snails—turtles also sometimes want to be more than they are or have more than they do.

“The yearning does drive some of us to be better versions of ourselves,” I say. “But I take your point. Most often, our ‘shoulds’ come from people who want something from us. The agendas of our masters—not good masters like you—are always exploitative and self-serving. We’ve built a society upon the idea of worshipping and obeying them.”

“And look where it’s gotten you,” the immortal says, confident in my protection and perambulating the rock. “The best version of yourself is the creative, organic one, not the one that submits to distraction, disappears into virtual worlds to have pretend sex or pretend wars or pretend races.”

“One of your friends told me that everything we do is pretend, that it’s all a game.”

“I’m trying to say that a scripted life is not a fulfilling life,” says the immortal. “Even if the script is written by a genius. We all have to be who we really are, not who others would have us be.”

“Truer words were rarely spoken.”

“Having said that, since you’re not immortals, you have to pay attention to your own survival. If you’re dead, you can’t accomplish self-realization. Survival requires discipline, persistence, and effort. Every turtle knows this. We turtles pay attention to what we’re doing. We own the consequences of our actions. Now, would you do me a small favor?”

“It would be my privilege and honor.”

“Thank you. You’re a courteous monk, I’ll give you that. Would you mind going over to that bush of beautiful Nara melons and opening one for me? I love the taste, but I can’t bite through them until they are soft, by which time they are rotten. I have always wanted to taste a fresh one.”

I set her down atop the rock and make my way over to evaluate the fruits. The immature melons are about the size of a golf ball, green, round and knobby; the more mature ones are slightly larger but softer. I pluck one. It smells exotic, aromatic, and tantalizing, with large dark seeds and custard-colored flesh. I am about to take a bite when I hear a small cry. I turn to see a medium-sized ground bird with a wickedly curved red beak, a Monteiro’s hornbill, snatch up the tiny immortal.

“No!” I scream.

The hornbill lets go as I close in. I see that one of the turtle’s forelimbs is gone and the stump is bleeding profusely. The hornbill snatches up the tortoise again. I take off in pursuit, my monk’s slippers tapping quickly across the red dirt, but I cannot close the gap between us. Reaching a safe distance, the hornbill drops the tortoise again and plunges its beak into the little turtle’s plastron. Intestines seep from the wound.

“Don’t die! I’m coming!” I yell.

The little tortoise puts out her head. “Thank you so much for the melon. It was delicious!”

“No!”

“To live and die is better than not to live at all,” she calls to me, her voice stronger than I expect. “Better this real world with all its mortal risks than the fake ones with all their dull safety. Seize the day, Monk! Be who you really are and be happy.”

An instant later, as her gaze pierces me, the hornbill bites off her head.

I collapse onto the dirt. Clouds gather as witnesses. Lizards scamper, grateful their own turn was not today. In the distance, a rhinoceros roars, an elephant trumpets, and a zebra screams. The hornbill points its beak skyward again and swallows. Africa turns dim again, and I return to my park, my heart heavy and my cheeks wet.

“That lesson I got loud and clear,” I say, but it’s still early in the park, and there’s nobody about to hear me.