NEW MOMENT, NEW FACE?

         Every so often, it becomes clear to me that each moment is a brand new one, never before seen or experienced in the whole history of the universe. Try as I may, I can’t imagine anything in any present moment that’s not completely crisp and unused. Moments may seem to contain odds and ends from the past, but those odds and ends are all experienced in the fresh and new moment called Now. If I say, staring at the mirror, that my face is surely not new, the statement itself is said in the clean and pristine present. The statement is about “oldness”, but the statement, as well as the thought behind it and the moment itself, shines with sheer newness. I can label my face, with all its furrows and grooves, as “old”, but since it’s staring back at me in a totally new and unspoiled moment, it must somehow share in that unblemished newness. As strange as it may sound, if the moment is new, must not the face also be new?

         I wonder . . . Could thinking this way – thinking about the absolute inescapability of newness – actually transform the appearance of a face? Could my well-wrinkled face, seen always with a spirit of newness, slowly seem somewhat newer, day by day?