My destination was vaguely defined, or I only contemplated it partially. Yet a typhoon-like energy in my mind nevertheless made me start! I distinctly remember that I may not be returning to the same place I have called home for years, or, worst yet, the house might not be there to welcome a homecoming. It was also possible that I couldn’t return; all alternative scenarios were reasonable! No arguments, however, were decisive enough to deter me because a life journey isn’t a guaranteed path in a circle; there is no such principle that dictates it must end at the starting point. Since I needed to start somewhere, why not make it immediately? As a youth in my mid-twenties from the poorest country in the world, I left my country.
I illustrated the route through feeble research and wishful thinking! But what else could it be now that I can skim over those years from memories? Of course, my first encounter with the dream-like path appeared more alien than I had foreshadowed, as if it were a land of whimsical weather. I would dodge hail and thunder only to smile, sometimes almost immediately, when the bright sun picked through a thick cloud. There were always headwinds, so it seemed! Moving, getting up, and doing mundane tasks felt excruciatingly demanding on every part of my body. My approach was filled with trials and errors and many partings. I always needed more time to be comfortable with my direction, if I could ever finalize it! While enduring flurries as my constant companion, my earliest grown-up realization about life began to sprout silently without fanfare. I was on an invisible pendulum, oscillating between the crest and trough of possibilities. Reluctantly or not, I decided on an order: we all decide, we begin—we must start somewhere.
The clock ticked, and I grew older than wiser. The commotions of life began to lose their sharp edges and felt pale compared to my previous sentiments about them. I mulled the notion that I, too, was endowed with a gift—a good fortune like everyone I envied for roaming the earth! To embrace this intangible idea, I needed to be anchored in faith. Because without complete trust in life, everything—the time and space we inhabit—constantly slips away from our grasp. Convictions can chaperone us if we become involuntarily grateful for the trees, clouds, sand dunes, trickles on the lake, or an ant that falls by our side of the unmarked trail. To concede has challenges; the insight always evades, but it will not abandon us. The guardian angels of Northstar whispered when I eloped with the moonlight many nights under an open sky, deeming a caress of assurance on my shoulder with my eye half closed.
When we are a mere dot in the history of this blue planet, it is hard to embrace guidance from our essence. But we have always been a dot, insignificant when the universe stretches 12 billion light-years wide. Still expanding faster than any speed the mind can apprehend while we breathe away toward the shared destination. Yet we make up the universe. The quarks are smaller than us, but they, too, are part of the entirety. So the heirloom must dwell with everyone. Without us, all of us, the existence of the cosmos is in peril!
If you are tired, you ought to be; this journey is without a known destination other than knowing we put one step after another. That’s all there is! Let’s relax under a tree or lie down on the meadow if you stumble upon one. If you find yourself under the scorching sun in a desert with no relief—a possibility—the shade of a cloud is on its way to shield you. They must. We share the same elements with the celestial body. We were part of them before the endowment brought us into being, and we will remain so in this never-ending universe. The quantum entanglement crafts rain to assure us they are wounded when we cry alone! Listen to the howling in the wind; the clouds gallop to nourish us with solace. Only if we could remember what we knew all along—there is much more to the world than what we think, calculate, and anticipate with observations. The hidden splendor awaits, and it must—not how we desire it to be but how it ought to be.
Akrasia | uh-krey-zhee-uh | Noun | Ancient Greek
The act of knowing you shouldn’t be doing something but doing it anyway.