Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?Actually, who are you not to be?
~Marianne Williamson, Return to Love
Play me softly.
Seek me in dark corners, in a solemn key, on a day of whispered storms. There is no distinction between silence and screaming, now – not in this hour, not in this place.
Almost enough doesn’t cut it. Not because 99% isn’t good but because that 1% is too much. How can so little weigh so much?
Atlas shrugs, and the world turns.
I laugh, and I break a little too after recalling the heavy sound of that universal sigh. It’s deep inside me. My interiors are echo chambers of great things - great and portentous.
The threat in me is not that I will fail but that I will succeed past all hoping. And in that moment the wave might break. What greater fear is there than that love, joy, beauty might prove capricious?
Give me no more tentative words. Hand me no more best shots – no iffy, wayward words that take aim but never strike my heart.
I want dizzy definition, not this moody rhyme that rolls too easily off my inconstant tongue.
I am ticking off the boxes, and if this, my right hand, wavers at the gate there can be no substance to change.
I need to know that what I do can be done again, can be repeated until it is as steady as a rock. Until there are no more mercurial shifts left to bear, and there is only firm and positive proof.
What I long for is the tangible presence of being. I desire nothing so much as the unmistakable quality of life that rests in me, and no other.
I will ride this express imprecision, wear this grey incalculable mess, breathe this fickle air until the day that my questions are answered.
I am the seeker and the sought, that much I know. It may seem like very little but it’s most of the game. It’s 99%. Grant me faith that the missing piece will fall into place, and eyes to see it drop.
Step up to the plate, approach the well-worn line and then take that one last breath. Move forward, not because of what brought you to that point but because of what stands in front.
Have you read The Unbearable Lightness of Being? This post reminds me of Maria’s dream. (Maria? Been a long time since I read it…)
Can’t say as I have but it looks like I’ll have to now. Maria ‘eh – I’ll look her/the book up.
*cough* someone seems to be missing from your new blogroll ;)
That has to be one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.
Oh no, I’m sorry, la! I am a goof. So sorry! Didn’t at all mean to leave you out when I moved things around. I’ll put you back where you belong now =)
Seriously, Trini? Wow, erm, thank you. I was shooting for vaguely hopeful… I guess I overshot a little? ;)
Hopeful, yes, and lovely too.
Thanks Jennifer :)
Many of us year for that rock steadiness. How hard it is to trust anything when you can’t really trust your own brain to be there for you at random points. We keep moving that direction, though, hoping.
As always, lovely writing.
Found it to filled with a vauge of deep hope. Thanks for sharing.
This is lovely writing, like all of it.
This part struck me for some reason–
“I need to know that what I do can be done again, can be repeated until it is as steady as a rock. Until there are no more mercurial shifts left to bear, and there is only firm and positive proof.
What I long for is the tangible presence of being. I desire nothing so much as the unmistakable quality of life that rests in me, and no other.”
I think it struck me because people are always talking about how we can’t have certainties and have to risk failure, but when there’s trauma or some lack that keeps us from getting that solidness of being and presence in the first place, everything else is harder and more daunting ever after. It’s not just a fear of not being successful as you point out; it’s also some other kind of yearning for being, for one’s self.
The One Percent is a real bastard.
I agree with cheesemeister. But also with the others – this is lovely – and hopeful – and a little frightening. I believe, that that 1% is made up of our faith. Faith in God, faith in ourselves, faith in the world around us. And only one of those is ever really true 100% of the time…
@Immi – Exactly. Hope is enough but sometimes it’s kind of a sucky trade off.
@Terri – My pleasure :)
@Eeabee- I’m glad it struck you as truth. There’s something more to it, something more than the obvious, I reckon. If it was just uncertainty then it wouldn’t be so much of a risk ‘eh.
@Cheesemeister – That it is! Definitely.
@Jamma – Thank you, and yes, it is a little scary. A little confusing and messy, too. But things that are worth it usually are.