My Desire

I notice the people sitting in a small sports bar across the street. They’re cheering and chatting. They look so alive. I want to cross the street and join these people just to connect with them – to be a part of something. But a subtle voice that comes from within – that whispers from the open wounds in my heart – holds me back from doing so. So I keep walking. Alone.
I walks to the end of the city center where I see a path that leads up a grassy hill. The hill, I know, overlooks a spiritual sanctuary. But it isn’t the sanctuary I want to visit tonight – not yet anyway. It’s a warm, breezy Saturday night and I want to find a place outdoors with sufficient light so I can sit and read the novel I'm grasping in my right hand.
But reading isn’t what I really want. Not deep down. What I really want is for someone – anyone at all – to tap me on the shoulder and invite me into their world. To ask me questions and tell my stories. To be interested. To laugh with me. To want me to be a part of their life.
But it isn’t even this connection with someone new that I want most. At least not at the deepest level. At the deepest level, in the core of my soul, even fleeting connections with others seem to interfere with what I desires most. Which is to know that I"ve truly loved. That I'mnot alone in this world. And that whatever I was put here to do, in time, will be done and shared with others who care.
While I didn’t consciously expect such a rapid, tragic series of events in my life, it also wasn’t totally unexpected. Subconsciously I knew that I had created a life for myself that was unsustainable. It was a life revolving around my social status in which all of my relationships brought with them a mounting and revolving set of expectations. This life left no time for spiritual growth or true love.
Yet, I"m drawn to spirituality and love. I"vebeen drawn to both all my life. And the only thing that steered me off course into this unsustainable lifestyle was the imprudent belief that if I did certain things and acted in certain ways I would be worthy in the eyes of others. That my social status would procure love from these people. And that I would never be alone.
Irealize, now, how wrong I was.
I walk up a steep paved road on the outskirts of the city center. I feel the burn in my quads as Imarches higher and higher. The road is, at first, filled with quaint boutique shops and young couples and friends, but as it advances uphill they give away but I keep marching higher and higher until Ireache a clearing where there is a small public park.
In this park, a group of teenagers huddle around two guitarists who are strumming and singing an acoustic melody. “Is it a popular song?” I think to myself. I'mnot sure because I haven't had time lately to listen to music. I want to join the group. I want to tell the guitarists that their music is incredible. But I hesitate. I just can’t find the courage to walk over to them.
Instead, I sit on a park bench a few hundred feet away. The bench overlooks the cityscape below. I stare off into the distance and up into the night sky for several minutes – thinking and breathing. And I begin to smile, because I can see the spiritual sanctuary. It’s dark outside, but the sanctuary shines bright. I can see it clearly. I can feel it’s warmth surrounding me. And although I know the sanctuary has existed for an eternity, my heart tells me something that keeps a smile stretched across my cheeks: “This sanctuary is all mine tonight.”
Not in the sense that I owns it. Nor in the sense that it isn’t also a sanctuary for millions of other people around the world. But rather in the sense that it belongs to all of us as part of our heritage, exclusively tailored for every human being and our unique needs and beliefs. It’s a quiet refuge that, when we choose to pay attention, exists all around us and within us. We can escape to it at any time. It’s a place where we can dwell with the good spirits and guardian angels who love us unconditionally and guide us even when we feel lost and alone.
Especially when we feel lost and alone and there I found my self again loved unconditionally.