A Review of Recurring Life

You will understand that I am a qualified speaker on the subject before us, as my reputation precedes me in every arena, history, and imagination. A cat is a cat, you will say, and I will confirm, yes, I am a cat. However, there is one thing that most folks don’t know, and this is what I’m about to tell you.

The fact is, cats do indeed have nine lives, but those lives aren’t all cat.

I’ll let you sit with that for a moment before we proceed. I know of the startle it creates.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Let’s continue. Now that we’ve established cats have nine varied lives, let us progress to the real reason I’m here before you: I’d like to disclose what it’s like to live in vastly different ways. My only aim is to speak forthright with you. Thus, I must admit I hadn’t taken note of the wide differences but also the close similarities until this current life, my last. As it happened, I was immersed in the living, and it never occurred to me to connect dots along the way. Now that I have, I must not leave the earth without passing this knowledge on.

A cat is born into life as a cat. After this introductory life is lived, for long or short, less or great, the next life commences, and thus begins an interconnecting chain of lives, the last of which once more is a cat. All cats assume the reason for these feline bookends to our existence is for reconciliation purposes, or synthesis. Perhaps.

I, dear friends, am in the bottom of the ninth, as we say. It is from this vantage point that I share this illumination with you. Let’s begin.

I was born into royalty as a palace stray within the imperial court of Constantine the Great, circa 330 AD. While I held dignified bearing, no palace cat knew of such things as a birthday, thus I estimate my beginning. Yet, since I personally witnessed — not ten feet away — Constantine cry with grief at his mother Helena’s final breath, I can assure you of the general time. There are countless places and positions to be born into, and I will never complain about my entry into this world. It was a delight at times, but an anguish at others, in other words, normal. If I were to do one thing over, I wouldn’t have stood directly under the men hauling those large stones to the top of Helena’s mausoleum, as big stones are easy to mishandle. And so it was — my first life was only a taste of what could have been.

If my first life was brief, my second made up for it by an extremely large margin of error. Shortly after the rock mishap, I woke to my new reality as a bristlecone pine sapling pushing up from the rocky ground in what is now the American West. The sun shone down on the tip top of me with a brilliance that nearly blinded but didn’t. I got used to it, and then watched the daylong radiance from that very spot for the next 1600 interminable years, give or take. It took me decades to grow inches, but I kept at it.

The sky was either my saving grace or nemesis, depending on my mood. I watched the color blue every day for over a century and a half — five hundred and eighty-two thousand days of azure. My friends and I would joke, “Are you zure that’s azure?” But it was not a comedy. It was maddening. Though, if I were to be objective, there certainly were days that delivered an artful peace in that sky. But the long and short of it: there was great relief when a fungus finally freed me of my general boredom and I was reborn into my third life, a sheep.

Now, a sheep is a good life if you didn’t know. I had the good luck to be born onto a small wool farm in Londonderry. This ensured a life of repose, as undue stress would diminish the quality of my hair fibers and thus my production value. Who would complain about that? I didn’t.

I passed the time on the pasture with the butterflies and sea air and my farm pals, one of whom was the neighboring cow. She and I would steal time together by the rock under the lone tree, each on our own side of the eastern fence. We shared jokes and challenged each other to consider for a moment what the tree would do, or the fence, or butterfly. It was an enchanting — and sometimes rollicking — good time. I remember on one lazy visit by the tree, Amelia Earhart from America flew right over us in a plane, though we didn’t know this at the time, and instead were rather traumatized by the ordeal.

Speaking of America, this is where I was off to next after a ruinous bout of parasites did me in and I cracked back into the world as a human boy in Brooklyn, NY on the 14th of November 1936. I know this date with confidence because humans will keep track of most anything. Due to the constant fuss that was made over my hair in Londonderry, I grew to be a young fellow who cared for these matters not a whit. For some folks, this would be a life deficit, but I found my people and became a Beatnik poet as soon as I left my parents’ home. I didn’t get too far, as none of my poetry ever made it to press, so I shifted gears and opened a bagel shop in Queens.

I sold bagels, coffee, and the daily paper for over forty years. My customers were happy to have me, and I them, but the day-to-day left a bit to be desired sometimes. I assumed there should be more. Recently, I had a friend tell me what it was like to be a cup of hot chocolate. “Snuggles,” he said to me, “there I was, tumbling down someone’s throat, listening to the delighted joy of what deliciousness does to a person, and I realized in that moment I mattered. I said to myself, Lou, you are living the dream.”

But I wanted a bigger dream, with bigger impact, which might be why I woke as a tropical cyclone off the coast of Africa, sometime after a rather gripping heart pain took me at my desk at the shop, as this is the last I can remember.

This fifth incarnation is nearly impossible for me to describe to anyone who hasn’t been a large storm, but you can try your best to imagine. If what I wanted was a bigger voice, I got one; not to mention an enormous body and force. The one thing I didn’t get was directional prowess, so I looped around the Atlantic Ocean indefinitely, keeping meteorology on its toes for a week or so. Everyone has a bucket list or a life wish. Mine was to hit land, even a small island, but this wasn’t to be. My big voice was wasted on the whales who simply swam out of range and couldn’t have cared less. What I learned most from Life #5 was that having big might doesn’t lead to big impact necessarily. This disappointment carried me over to my next life, that of a Dasani water bottle.

Don’t laugh. Water bottles are an existence, too. They have cause and effect. Of all the lives I’ve lived, being a disposable bottle was the calmest. Going from an almost disastrous storm to a disregarded nothing bottle, it was a lesson in humility. But it set up my life as a meditative master. Initially, I performed beautifully for Dasani, tipping refreshing water to the lips of a loyal customer. But then, through some confusing chain of events, I found myself on my back, floating on the Pacific Ocean. My first thought was, uh-oh, seasickness. But that never materialized, thankfully. For the next few years, I floated here and there, to and fro. I spent my days staring up at the sky, which brought back memories of being a bristle cone pine.

With an utter lack of ability to effect a single effort, I began to teach myself meditation, and thus my life as a guru water bottle took shape. As soon as I drifted my way to an enormous cluster of other trash, I became renown for my meditative teachings. I had purpose, peace, and gratitude. I didn’t want to leave that life. But nothing lasts forever, for better or worse, so one day a whale gulped me by accident. I died a painful and lonely death, and I don’t think the whale was too happy either.

Upon my last arduous moment in the whale’s intestinal tract, out I expanded as the most extravagant rainbow you could witness. I was stunning. And a gift for all to behold. The only problem was, as a rainbow, you’re never really sure who you are. Are you the water droplets? Are you the angle of the eye of the beholder? Are you the sun? Because each of these cooperates with precision to give you existence. I’ve spoken to other prior rainbows since then. They all express the same dismay. A rainbow is exalted by others, and this is what you think you should want, but the truth is that a rainbow is a beautiful, private identity crisis. And herein lies the tutorial. While I might grapple with who shall be a rainbow — water, light, or eye — a rainbow has intrinsic value, as we all have intrinsic value, regardless of who we grapple to be.

Which is perhaps why my penultimate embodiment was a service dog. I hence was able to tap into my value with intention. I showed promise from the beginning as one who might train to be loyal, which I did. Service was in my bones. I stood at the edge of a curb with resolve as frequently as I ignored the squirrel in my periphery, and I did it all out of love. This was the best gift of all — to have loved — and I accepted it with grace as I expired in my owner’s arms after a long, full canine turn.

Now that I’ve reached my final go around, I’ve learned there is more to one’s life than is noticed while living it. There is history to observe, whether common or tectonic, and there is beauty hiding in plain sight. There are folks who impact us more than we know, and there is impact of our own to be made each day. A small voice can be of great consequence if it speaks well, and love is found by loving. And last, we are more valuable than we typically understand.

These are some of my lessons that came once I asked for them. Interestingly, no matter how various my experience, the lessons came forth as if a cat needed to learn what a storm needed to learn what a tree did. Isn’t that a curious thing? Further, there are unlimited lessons out there to be found on land, sea, or sky. The good news is that even when some things become scarce, lessons are always well stocked. I wish you all the best in these regards.

Finally, to answer the question I get asked all the time:

Yes. There truly is a world-famous meditation retreat floating atop the Pacific Ocean. And yes, I started it.

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