How far or How near are we?

So Bahari! Nanda Sena! Sam! Mamu! Uncle! Maca! Whatever you are called by these days, where are you at? Where is this moment in time and space are we at? Who are you? Where have you come from, where have you been and where exactly are you headed? Are we near or are we far from our final destination? Where is our final destination,; what is afterlife? How have you spent your lt of sixty odd years on this Planet? Fruitful? Worth you while? What have you learned from being here for that allotted time and space? What have we got to share between us and our fellow creatures, large and small, crawling and running, flying and swimming in our oceans by our having been here sharing all the comforts, joys, beauty and Love, sharing all the horrors of pain and suffering inflicted upon ourselves by ourselves ; what have you left us behind?
You have walked the sacred lands of the Apache Nation in the Gila National Monument, in Silver City, South of New Mexico on the borders of the Sonora Desert. Sat on in the nest of the Bald Eagle at the edge of, Sandpoint,  the middle of the Aleutian Chain. You who have braved the cold Alaskan winds and sat in meditation on top of pillar of rocks out in the Bering Sea, where are you at Now! 
For three years I spent meat cutting, 9 - ten hours a day in a cold environment of below 45F where you can see your breath as you work boning beef separating meat from bones sometimes one hundred heads of cattle a day, for hamburger. I was working for Packerland Packing and Green Bay Meats and Cold Storage, in Green Bay Wisconsin. It was the worse and the best of times in my life where i had a wife and a five month old baby to raise in a place I had just landed after having arrived all the way from Penang, Malaysia. Green Bay, Wisconsin was a cold and Welcoming place I sat in at one time. I was there and I did that...and survived.

Where I have been and what i have done are all part and parcel if the past of who I am and I can only keep looking back to share my stories...my path; getting myself to where you want to be. I have lived my life as closely according to my will as i could and often I have let my ego override my sense of judgement. I let my head and not mu heart rule and for these times in my life I have paid and am still paying my dues accordingly, like having a divorce and letting go of my first son when i was living in Green Bay and being a meat cutter. If i have any regrets, this was one of them and it was as it should be. However on a more positive note, my son is a Captain in the Emirates Fleet and his mother lives much well off than most in Germany. Not such a bleak ending for all concern nothing that a little Love and Compassion cannot erase.
When I walked the empty streets,(except for a few groups of tourists) of Pompei, Italy, on one cold wet afternoon with the wind blowing from the slopes of Mount.Vesuvius, I came to a realization of who I am although that who I am is now no more...has become who I was. When i completed arranging a tray full of heavy Chinese Soup Bowls into the rack for washing, It turned into a White Lotus of a Thousand petal right before my eyes. I had a realization of who I am, and it was an awakening experience share by two people, my Practice Instructor at the Green Gulch Zen Center and Myself. I looked up from the Lotus and stared right into his eyes behind thick glasses and we bowed to each other as he mumble, "Sometimes it happens!" I myself who I am and this too is no more...has become who I was.
No, I have not done enough, worked hard enough to alleviate the cause of suffering in myself or my fellow beings. I have merely come to understand my purpose in life most recently and even then i am not fully clear as to what my Divine purpose in being who I am. I have learned to imitate the Masters  or walked in their footsteps, I have listened to and follow at their footsteps and i have sat before them and among them. I am who I am...and this too will pass...