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Ebb and Flow: Life's Binary

Waves, pretending to be outliers,

are truly born of distant turmoil,

hidden from even the keenest seekers.

Their rise holds an unmatched beauty;

a rhythm unheard,

even by the most masterful musicians.

The levitating hues,

colours unseen by the finest painters,

secretly ascend, steady and bold.

As they reach their crescendo,

spectators catch their breath;

here begins the journey untold. 

The journey unfolds,
with every fall from the crest,
launching life’s binary: highs and lows,
pleasure and pain,
forming a wave, and the series begins.

The flow starts dancing,
spewing waves that manifest
as life’s first little pleasures,
casting anchors
to the ship of existence.

Rolling towards the shore,
unlike the rolling stone gathering no mass,
the wave collects new waters,
leaving old tides behind,
like gathering fresh hopes
and waving bitter memories away.

The intensity builds,
birthing passion that bathes one in ecstasy.
But before you know,
passion twists into obsession;
energy churns into restlessness.
All flows in the natural justice
of life’s binary,
flow and ebb,
hope and despair,
expectation and reality,
the endless irony of being.

Each wave you see is a new day,

waving the old vice,

ushering new bends, new joys, new life.

Like weaving fresh friendships,

waving goodbye to others, 

the waves remind us:

each chapter is a rebirth for the wise. 

The wave, as it ages and matures,
having seen and experienced life’s binary,
once longed to embrace the shore tightly,
now reduced in physical intensity,
it laps gently upon the shore.

Finally meeting its long-awaited destiny,
only to watch itself fade away,
rather than linger in that embrace,
suddenly realizing the inherent purposelessness of it all,
for meaning exists only in what one chooses to attach.

The wave, no matter how beautiful,
must eventually crash.
No matter how rhythmic its sound once was,
it’s now regularly punctuated by chaos.

In beauty, we find life’s meaning
and in its absence, life’s futility.

Is the crest of a wave its triumph,
or its undoing?

Is one’s pinnacle a real high,
or just a fleeting one?

What did the wave roar for?
Only to rest gently in the end, breathless,
for the shore to whisper back:
Was it worth the roar?

— Aruna

    Draft created on 17th Sep 2025

    First published on 17th Dec 2025

    Revised on 18th Dec 2025