You start. You start from somewhere. It may not be the home you would return to. Even if it were, it might not be there to welcome your homecoming. Or simply, you can’t return! Life isn’t a guaranteed path in a circle; it often does not end at the starting point.
The path you decided to follow was nothing but a hunch. It would change its course as if it were a land of flighty weather—you dodge thunder only to smile, sometimes almost immediately by a bright sun picking through a thick cloud. And, of course, the path is muddled with partings. You would have needed more time to finalize which direction would have been better—if you could conclude, ever! Yet you choose, you start—you start somewhere.
You are endowed with a gift! A gift you would only kiss when you are anchored in faith, stare without scrutiny. One thing that will chaperone you if you become involuntarily grateful about the trees, sand dunes, or an ant that falls by your path. It will evade you just like gold did for the settlers during the gold rush in the early days in the western US. It will abandon you not—I have been whispered this many times when I eloped with the moonlight. That’s not how things work until you are a mere dot in the history book on this blue planet. You have always been a dot, not significant at all when the universe extends 12 billion light-years wide. And expanding while you breathe away in your journey—faster than any speed your mind can comprehend. Yet you and I make up the universe, even if we are the dots. The quarks are smaller than us, but they, too, are part of the universe. And the endowment leaves you, not anyone. Without us, the existence of it all is a peril.
If you are tired, you ought to be; it’s a journey without a known destination other than knowing you put one step after another. Sit under a shade of a tree, or lie down on the meadow if you stumble upon one. You might be under the scorching sun in a sandy desert with no relief—that is a possibility too! But the shade of a cloud is on its way to shield you. They must. You share the same elements with the celestial body. You were part of them before the endowment brought you into being, and you will remain so in this never-ending universe. The quantum entanglement brings the rain from the sky to assure you they, too, are hurt! Listen to the howling in the wind; the clouds are on their way to bring you solace from the fiery sun. Only if you remember what you knew all along—there is much more to the world than what you think, calculate, and anticipate based on everyday observations. You are privileged to draw your conclusions; that is part of being human. What is hidden sometimes, though, is the wonder that awaits, and it must—not how you hope it to be but how it ought to be.
Metanoia
Noun: the journey of changing your mind, heart, self, and way of life.