So why not feel like that always? Well, it would be exhausting, surely, to turn life into this sort of unending observance. Ordinary consciousness probably didn’t evolve to foster this kind of perception, focused as it is on being—contemplation—at the expense of doing. But that, it seems to me, is the blessing of this molecule—of these remarkable cacti!—that it can somehow crack open the doors of perception and recall us to this truth, obvious but seldom registered: that this is exactly where we live, amid these precious gifts in the shadow of that oncoming moment.
