And so it was that we, a generation, grew to be disappointed by the world. We’d imagined that on our eleventh birthday we’d receive a letter from Hogwarts and our magical wizarding life would then begin. At sixteen we’d discover that we are the child of an ancient and powerful deity and reclaim our lost throne. Maturing from stories, in college we fancied that we would discover our purpose and fight triumphantly toward the Good. We believed that our working life would be series of mountaintops. We would put people on mars. Cure cancer. We would free the planet from fossil fuels. We would become CEO’s, thought leaders, heroes of the age. We would see grand landscapes that would fill us with God’s bliss. We would become nomads and come to know the lives of the poor, the rich and the strange. Our circle would circumnavigate the world, and all would be impacted by us. We would make a change in this world.
We were called upon. Surely there was a divine force of destiny guiding us. If not from a bearded man in a chair in the sky, then at least by the greater universe. There was some conspiring power that pointed our intuition toward the Good. That gave meaning to our moral choices. That recognized us as a divine center of consciousness marked out against a harsh world. There was an adventure awaiting us if we rose up to claim it. We were called upon.
We would fall in love passionately. Aye, learn the art of loving. Deepen our powers of empathy. We would learn how to give and receive our full range of emotions. To live without shackle or chain, fully articulate and expressive. We would give to others our true selves, and receive the same of them. We would meet our equal and become something else, become complete. In this person we would see that they too had climbed all of their own mountains, been called upon in their own right. In this person, we would find contentment. The bliss of a perfect match, a yin complementing yang.
There, at the climax of our story, we would create children that went on to do even greater feats than we had, learned to love even deeper than we had. And we would grow old as respected elders of our family, providing wisdom and stories through the ages as the Ouroboric cycle continued. And there we stood at this center of triumph, the protagonist of the drama. Not only would the Good triumph over the Evil, but we would be the ones to do it.
We got our first job of adulthood, and it was as though the world had opened its gates to us. Our peers wrote us with admiration, and our parents glowed. Here was where the Good work was done. Those most capable in their field gathered to set their minds to the most daunting of human tasks, and we stood at the edge of the ocean ready to throw our little droplet. Ready to navigate this ocean and to grow. To be not the droplet but the wave, not the wave but the shuddering storm!
Yet….as the months drug on, we began to notice things. The small cracks in the smiles our our superiors. Those whom we admired were as uncertain as ourselves. They spoke to us about strange things. It became clear that they’d been caught in their own lives, in its mundanity, or in it’s inflated sense of self-importance. They told us about cocaine, and about profits they had made. It was apparent that they’d lost the divine light that had once called upon them. Yet we held that light within our own chest, so we did not despair.
You are so young! They said. You have never even had your heart broken. You know nothing! What could we say? We had not had our heart broken. We didn’t know heartbreak, that epidemic that warps the very compass of its victims. Leaves them without orientation or hope. Causes them to betray their own ideal and accept lesser treatment. Accept that others will not return their love, will not even receive it. They will twist their insides with careless words and a distant kiss, and they will begin to forget what they once held sacrosanct. How could we know? Our heart was intact and strong, hopeful and persistent. Even as they told us we would one day suffer, it told us that they might be right, but it was not for us to fear.
We came to know the pleasures of a new relationship, and again felt that sense of the opening world. It’s sweeping romance undulated with cuddled contentment, it’s depth of conversation dynamized by bouts of laughter. We came to love the physicality of it, and simplicity of its joy. Exist together was its only directive. There were difficult moments, to be sure. Tears from misunderstandings, sorrow leftover from past traumas. Yet it all seemed so worth it. So very much a part of the process. We would not sacrifice even those difficult times; they brought the moments of tenderness in full character. Yes, even the monotony of life seemed worthwhile. And we still held onto our light.
We began to see the unfathomable complexity of what it is to be in love. We stood jaw agape as our partner’s mood irrationally torqued itself through sludge and mania only to level out just in time for dinner. We watched our own mood block any emotion towards them without warning, suddenly unable to ask them even how their day was. A thick silence took hold of our throats as we grew annoyed, tired or ashamed. So badly we wanted to embrace them, see them smile, bring laughter in to the home. Yet we could not. We were blocked.
You know, he had once said, life is kind of like Ikea.
We were sitting with our college roommate in the first aisle of the furniture store. Go on, we said, smiling at his absurdity, but curious. Well, we’re in the first chair that we found, right at the entrance. It’s a good chair, perfectly passable. Comfy, nice color, everything.
But Ikea is set up as a path. You have to walk through the entire store and get to the end; it’s one way. You walk to the end and you don’t turn back. So this chair we’re in now, it’s pretty great. But what if later on in Ikea, we find a better chair. What if this chair isn’t the right one for us. Perfectly fine, but not the ONE.
Huh, Ikea is a bit like life, we agreed.
We wondered if it was our partner which was blocking our emotions. If perhaps there was something about them that made us act this way. That no longer inspired free flowing love. Perhaps there existed a person which could bring forth our beloved emotions more completely, whom we could care about without reservation. Perhaps this person before us was not the equal we had envisioned but the precursor to that equal. A necessary lesson on the road toward our true complete partner. With this idea firmly rooted, we severed our connection and we traveled.
We hiked in the mountains for weeks with our best friend, waking at sunrise and sleeping at sunset. Our only directive to keep the trail and keep the pace. We spoke very little during the day, but howled in laughter in the evenings. Our own exhaustion loosening our spirits. We descended into the jungle and stopped for a week in a fishing village at its edge. We fancied we had found the very Heart of Darkness, and we began building a raft to take down the river to find Kurtz.
Yet the days were long, and the village slow. An abuela cooked us the same meal three times a day, and in between we took to smoking cigarettes and watching the river. We ceased also laughing together. We had slipped into a sort of tacit agreement to see this chapter through to its end. And when the raft was complete, we mounted it and were carried through a serpentine river until we realized we had no way back to the village except by foot. We would not find Kurtz this day. We sent our raft down the river in a flameless funereal pyre and walked back.
We had our Tarot cards read, and it seemed that the world had finally opened up to us. The gypsy sat across from us, with a layout of cards before her. We had formed a friendship with her, one we did not expect but very much appreciated. There was some sort of valley that kept drawing us together at the market and by the sea. She had felt calmed by our presence, and we fascinated by hers. A friendship formed. As she told us all the beautiful ways the world will be as prophecies are fulfilled, we told her all the wonderful ways the world had been in according to our eyes. After weeks of our stories, and her teaching us about energy and past lives, she decided that she must read our cards. Our curiosity obliged.
And so it was that the world opened up, and we were initiated into a universe grander, somehow more magical. She spoke to us of the great wheel ouroboros that keeps the world turning. Of the great ambition that drives us. Of the love that awaits us. We felt the urge to be cynical, yet we suspended it for the moment. As she read our cards, she began to weep. You surely are here for a rescue, she spoke. For weeks I have dreamt about it, I felt it when I saw you, and now the cards have told me so as well. You are here for a rescue. Not just for me but for many. You are needed here. You are here to give a gift to this world.
And we couldn’t help but hope, hope that perhaps we did have a destiny. That perhaps we were a necessary part of the drama of the world. We felt the still small light within us grow. It begged for release. Let me guide, it demanded. And we wanted so badly to let it. We wanted it to step forward and transcend us into another form where we felt only love and spoke only truth. We smiled at the weeping gypsy before us and felt just a bit closer to what we were meant to be.
Yet the cynicism returned. We quit our job to spare ourselves the monotony. We moved back home. The winter was harsh, and one by one our family members succumbed to illness. A sort of darkness took hold of our house. No one spoke to each other, we did not know what to say; dinner was silent. Depression beckoned us with every sunrise. And the sunset came so early. We’d all been through too much, seen more from each other than we could explain. Stayed silent when we should have spoken, spoken when we should have stayed silent. And the light within us grew dim, but still we knew that it would grow if we blew on it.
Or if a hurricane fanned it back to life.
Our time with her was a flash of blinding light and the searing of flesh. A morning to lay by her side in the sun, an afternoon to absorb the blue of her eyes, and an evening to dance. Woven between these pillars was the gentle roll of conversation and the beat of waves against the shore. To remember her we had only the imprint of her in our mind’s eye and a command: do not forget this. She was important. We tried simultaneously to forget she ever existed and to find her. Yet so cynical were we that we did not allow ourselves even the hope that our hearts begged us to feel, yet even still some small hope persisted.
When we saw her again a year later, we approached tentative. Subdue that hope, child, it will only harm you. You don’t know heartbreak! We recalled them saying. Relinquish your expectations. But the still small light told us that maybe, just maybe, there was one story of fantasy which could perhaps be true. Of course there was not. At our first embrace she pulled away every so slightly and we hoped that we’d only imagined it. Do not doubt, we said. Do not doubt.
In the second embrace we convinced ourselves that we had only imagined the misgiving. We held her so tightly that she could not doubt the force of our care, nor pull away from it if she tried. When her wall was built between us, we had our third embrace, and we saw in full scope the hopeless situation we faced. This was not the story we had played so many times through our mind. We did not know what this was.
So we paid attention. We asked her questions, and we listened to her response. This was not a story we knew, nor one we had even heard of before. We didn’t know what to make of her, what to call her, what she was to us. So we listened again, and slowly she began to take a new form to our eyes. One phrase at a time we learned what she truly was, and it was good. Perhaps less glorious, but good. When we said goodbye, we could not keep a note of melancholy from our voice, but it was good. In the space between our breaths, the cynic whispered to us; we tried our best to ignore him.
We came to in a techno rave, and it seemed to us that we finally understood the rules of the game. We truly were alone in this world. In the darkness writhed ten thousand languid bodies, expressing ultimate freedom with meaningless motion. Stripped of judgement of peers, where all acts were allowed, and a constant pounding of an industrial beat, we wiggled and shook our bodies from a windowless warehouse as the sun rose. Yet all the freedom we could desire stripped us of the very thing connecting us. Stripped us of meaning and mutual limitation. We had no common language. We were cores of consciousness trembling in the dark, and all the stories were gone. The relentless thrum of music took away from us even the sensation of passing time. We spoke to each other about how crazy our bodies felt, how much fun we were having, how glad we were to be there. Yet it was false.
We began to mistrust our friend. What could we trust of them which they could say? Give me something real! we said, shaking their shoulders. And it became clear that we were alone. That there was no guiding light. There was nothing connecting Adam to Eve. We were a light, and all around us were other lights. But they lacked coherence, commonality. And in that aloneness was a sinking sadness. This isn’t how we wanted it to be.
Yet we saw that they, too, suffered. They, too, lacked the words to communicate what they felt. They too were alone. Not far from us a man stood gazing miles into the sky, his arms opened forward and tears streaming from his eyes. In the bathroom, he had stared in the mirror screaming I AM GOD, I AM GOD until god no longer had meaning and his cry was finally true.
Our friend took our shoulders as we had taken his. Somehow we were comforted by this. To see that others felt what we felt, even if not precisely. The eldest among us returned to make sure everything was alright. Are you thirsty? he asked, and handed us a bottle of water. And somehow that made it all better. Though we all suffered, though we all were alone, at least we could give water to the thirsty. We saw how one light can affect another, and it was okay.
The stories came back, and hope and connection returned. The winter ended, and the days grew long once again, like a spine arching out of compression. The feeling came back to our fingers, and the shadow left our home. We remembered that we liked to dance, and we tried a new class. Our friends called us up, saying that they missed us and how have we been. What could we say? Instead we insulted them playfully and guilted them for not calling more often, we were worried that they might have perished in a can opening accident. They told us we could kindly go fuck ourselves. We exhaled a laugh of relief. The world was still as it ought to be.
And in our lunch breaks we wondered if we had in fact been disappointed by the world. It seemed like it had been so close to opening up to us so often. So many times we were moments from being initiated into a world of purpose and love and adventure and myth. Our letter from Hogwarts was continually lost in the mail. Yet had it not opened up just as we thought? Had we not found value in our work? Hadn’t we experienced love of friends and partners? Hadn’t we marched boldly into foreign lands looking for answers, and had we not received them? Did we not come to know the lives of the rich and poor, the healthful and sick. We were competent in our trade and valued in our circles. Perhaps our circle had not enveloped the whole world yet, but it certainly had grow larger that we could have comprehended in youth.
To recount our life up to this point is to perform a drama as potent as any we could imagine, and it had all been real. Yet it seemed separated from the magic we sought as children. Somehow sterilized of its fantasy and grandeur. Even acknowledging that the life we have lead is beyond the imagination of our prepubescent dreams, somehow those ill formed visions held a certain weight. We maintained a fondness for them that could not be found in their material form.
There are many things we still do not know. How can connection and love be found? And can it last? What feats are truly worth pursuing? If somewhere in the world, there truly is a paradise, a place we were meant for. If something truly can be ‘meant for’ anything.
So we consult our hearts and ask the still small light, are you there?
Cloud of Cade 