What a wacky day. I write and publish this very scattered, raw musings of a very erratic day. (editor's note: I can not get this post straight; it meanders here and there. When I try to pin it down in one place, it pops up elsewhere. I am now ready to call it quits.) It started out this blah color as I felt edgy, irritated and restless. My daughter's bronchitis would prevent us from attending the annual Mardi Gras parade in town. I have never missed it before and always look forward to it, despite my enjoyment and my perception of the quality of the parade going majorly downhill in the last years. Still, my restlessness urged me to move, to get away. In prior times it would almost have demanded I act, I move, I do something to escape the uncomfortable feelings churning within. Nothing to put a finger on, just yuck. This time I was grateful for my relative acceptance of what was.
Instead we played a game called the Ungame, where there is no winning or losing, just going around answering personal questions that can be very casual to very intimate. I sat with my discomfort as it prodded me, making me jumpy, staring out the window at the sun, longing to escape myself. I was able to both witness my inner turmoil, irritation and external seeking and stay out of story, yet hoping to land on something that would answer my yearning for wholeness. I told myself that the irritation was just leaving. I knew going to the parade was an illusion, promising relief it could not deliver except perhaps momentarily.
One of my daughter's answer's in the game stunned me. When asked something about the future, she said she doesn't think about the future. I asked her more and it seems she does not think about either future or past, something I have trained my mind to do with only limited success after endless hours of mediation. Apparently it is something she is living naturally! It made me realize how often I seek answers in the future although I do that less and less. It also made me aware of how little I truly know her, know anyone really. It also made me even more aware how different today's children are, what often unrecognized gifts they have. We played the game for hours and I gradually settled down. I recognized the incredible beauty of the moment and slowly was awash in a sea of love and even gratitude. The tenderness swamped me. I saw how empty all my plans for the future are, how they never give me what I most desire. All my eating, sugar, shopping, vacations only lead me away from myself when done with any intent to escape the present moment. They are always a trap that keeps me locked away from facing the falsely perceived demon of emptiness that sometimes tears at me, cursing me with a tainted version of myself, of my humanity. Nothing actually exists in the future or the past. When I yearn for something I do not have, I am already trapped as that thing, person or experience is not controllable, is not permanent, is by nature ephemeral. If I look deeply I see this. I am finding it nearly impossible to put this visceral understanding into words. I felt the yearning to get away from myself, to find something or someone to fill me. I watch someone close to me get the roller coaster ride of being in love, ecstatic when all is well, devastated when the relationship is challenged. While I sometimes yearn for someone to fill me, I choose not to be in relationship until I have answered my own yearning and emptiness. That is a game I have played and lost over and over. Ironically, it is in my moments of greatest connection and intimacy, moments that fulfill some of my deepest yearning as a human that also lead me to feeling trapped again. In those moments, I sometimes feel my desire rise for the other to fill my emptiness. Then when the other goes away, or is not loving, the emptiness can sometimes swamp me again. There is a sense of loss, of incompleteness whenever I see the other as the source of my love. I feel the high of the connection followed by the low of the separation. It is a paradox that I now understand that one of my greatest desires as a human is to be in loving partnership and that desire will only be fulfilled when I embrace my divinity, my wholeness, mySelf; when I experience internal unity rather than separation. What I have discovered is that seeking outside myself guarantees failure, but only always. When I find myself at Home in myself, there is no sense of loss, of need, of limitation. This contrast always keeps me honest, stopping me seeking my source in another.
I just finished watching a DVD I found both disturbing and yet very moving called "Flight." The ending moved me to tears and brought me back to one of the last questions I answered for the Ungame, "What would you like friends to say about you after you die?" I answered that I would consider my life complete and profoundly satisfying if at the end of my life my friends said that I was one of the most loving people they ever knew. My daughter looked up at me and said, "Mom, you know a lot of people already do say that about you." My mouth fell up with a searing blast of emotion as I realized that sadly, I don't really know that which only shows me that I not only know so little about others, apparently I also know so little about myself.
