Call it a suspicion, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that no one is exactly who or what they appear to be. What I mean by this, more specifically, is that we tend to, or even learn to, bury parts of ourselves deep within the caverns of our beings. To know ourselves, truly and deeply, and to become known - these things take time, patience, and dare I say, a kind reverence.
There are many melancholic lessons we continue to absorb with advancing age, but one of the beautiful things I continue to learn about myself is that there is so much about my inward parts still left to be discovered. Life, for me anyway, as time advances forward and certainty falls away, is a process of almost constantly unforming and reforming, bending towards some kind of invisible current that seems to be ever sweeping me forward.
This process requires gentleness, openness and patience. It requires the realization that I am not unlike the saguaro cactus, whose discernable growth requires decades. Or that I am not unlike the monarch butterfly, on a thousand mile search for home, for community, for rest.
I am an unfolding mystery, and so are you.
I'm a mystery of a trillion cells and a beating heart, firing neurons and flowing blood, and a myriad of other miraculous things happening and unfolding incessantly, unbeknownst to me. I'm a cosmic happening rooted in a local event, and so are you.
I'm also a mystery of fragility, of aging, of softening, of time increasing the metaphorical rings marking each passing trip around the sun.
When I seek to understand the mystery, both within and without, I turn to words. More specifically, I turn to stories. I suppose I'm not alone here. Story is part of the human condition. To share my story (and stories) unveils a bit of my mysterious soul to another, and vice versa. To honor my story means to hold it with a kind of reverence. Instead of reflexive naysaying or finding reasons to conjure fear that often comes with change; instead of admonishments or advice or rebuttals, embracing the mystery with a grateful heart. Real, tangible, juicy gratitude for the messy and sacred process of speaking these truths into existence.
I am a being affected by history and by geography, by theology and anatomy, whether I know much about these subjects or not. And with this fragile thing called my life unfolding, I am also admittedly harmed or healed by human interactions. I, like you, am a paradoxical combination of many things, neither fully bitter nor sweet, neither fully angry nor joyful. I am complicated. But guess what? I Am. And you Are, too. And that complication is beautiful.
You are complicated. Connections are complicated. Feelings are complicated. Nature is complicated.
I've come to realize that we are not observers bypassing a creation we've been kept out of; but rather, we are a part of the very creation we recognize as mysterious, strange and complicated. We are symbiotic souls in need of fellow humans to hear and hold and witness and commune.
But we Are. And we are here, together. And dammit, that's more than enough.
