People are often heard saying, “I have come to my senses,” “I can see the whole picture now,” “I have seen the light” or something to that effect.

When they say that, they may or may not actually have that self-declared realization. More often than not, it is just a casual remark made at some point of their journeys in life.

Our utterances can never be the final, unalterable word on the subjects they seek to address. In this very sense, is this observation guilty of proclaiming itself the ultimate direction on how we should view our utterances? No, this observation and the utterances it aims to address are not spoken with the same frame of reference in mind. Thus, we had better not bother ourselves with such a question.

Very often we feel that we have awakened to something, believing that something becomes clear to us every year, every academic term, every month, or even every single day. However, viewed in the context of history, these instances of ‘realization’ are nothing more than one’s comments on one’s feelings and understanding at the moments of the perceived realization. In fact, everything changes with the passage of time. So does one’s love for someone, it seems. When you say to someone, “I love you forever and ever,” it is but your personal experience, understanding or even commitment at that particular moment. Time is so serious while life, so full of twists and turns. At a different time and given a different set of conditions, you are likely to pay no attention to, think lightly of, or even go back completely on what you have said earlier.

I feel that it is more appropriate to see awakenings as a process. We live in constant awakenings to life - - we awaken to and develop new awareness about our personal and community lives, organizations, ethnic cultures, nature and the universe, the unknown and the neglected. As a rule, how we see the light depends on the development of our methodology, the change in our perspectives and languages, the interactions between things or people of different natures, the repeated motions of our languages and the practice of contemplative life. We see the light in the awakenings of our history.