Where Does the Dust Come From
Perhaps the dust was never outside us to begin.
There is a Buddhist verse that has stayed with me for as long as I can remember:
Originally there was not a single thing — where could dust ever settle?
I cannot remember exactly when I first came across it. I only know that it found its way into my life long before I was old enough to understand what it meant.
Whenever life becomes complicated, I seem to return to these words.
I have always loved them.
Not because I fully understand them.
But perhaps because I don’t.
Recently, I found myself reflecting on a relationship that had left me quietly unsettled. There had been no betrayal, no dramatic conflict, and no obvious right or wrong. Yet somehow, another person’s presence — or absence — could occupy my thoughts so effortlessly.
Eventually, I began to wonder if I had been asking the wrong question all along.
Perhaps the question was never whether another person truly understood me.
Perhaps the more unsettling question is this:
Can we ever truly understand another consciousness at all?
The universe, despite its vastness, often feels easier to understand than people.
The movement of planets can be predicted. The speed of light can be measured. Even the age of distant stars can be estimated through mathematics.
The universe follows patterns.
People do not.
Each of us carries invisible histories, private fears, unspoken longings, and contradictions that even we may struggle to understand within ourselves.
If so, how can we expect to fully comprehend another consciousness from the outside?
We spend our lives surrounded by other minds, yet never truly step inside them. We observe behaviour. We interpret words. We construct stories about who we think others are.
And still, how much do we actually know?
How much of our understanding is genuine insight?
And how much is simply our own projection?
Lately, I have started to wonder whether relationships are not really about understanding another person completely.
Perhaps they are about discovering ourselves through the attempt. The people who enter our lives may not always be there to provide answers.
Sometimes, they simply illuminate the parts of ourselves we have yet to see clearly — our fears, our expectations, our longing for certainty, and our desire to be chosen even in a world that offers very little certainty at all.
From this perspective, I wonder whether relationships might be one of the ways consciousness comes to know itself.
For a long time, I believed that simplicity meant avoiding complexity.
I am no longer so sure.
Perhaps simplicity is not the absence of difficulty. Perhaps it is what remains when we choose, again and again, to return to what truly matters after becoming entangled in what does not.
I sometimes wonder whether the relationships worth cherishing are not necessarily the ones that remove all uncertainty, but the ones that allow us to remain connected to ourselves despite it.
The ones in which we do not become smaller.
The ones in which we do not need to perform.
The ones in which we can simply breathe.
I used to think that maturity meant becoming better at understanding other people. The older I become, the less certain I am.
Perhaps maturity has more to do with recognising the limits of what we can know.
Perhaps wisdom lies not in certainty, but in humility — in accepting that another consciousness will always remain, to some extent, mysterious.
And perhaps that mystery is not a failure of human connection.
Perhaps it is precisely what gives connection its meaning.
After all, if another person could be fully predicted and entirely understood, would wonder still exist?
Would curiosity?
Would compassion?
I still find myself returning to that Buddhist verse:
“Originally there was not a single thing — where could dust ever settle?”
If there was originally nothing, where does the dust come from?
Does it arise from the world around us?
Or does it emerge quietly within us — from fear, expectation, attachment, and our longing for certainty in an uncertain existence?
I do not know.
What I do know is that, despite witnessing the complexity of human nature, I still choose simplicity. Not because simplicity is easy. But because I have come to believe that gentleness is a choice worth making.
Perhaps this is what going with the flow means to me.
Not giving up.
Not becoming indifferent.
But offering wholeheartedly what we are able to offer, while making peace with the parts of life that remain beyond our control.
As for what we should hold on to, and what we should let go of…
That, too, may be one of the lessons we spend a lifetime learning.