Patience
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
I see those around me experience both times for celebration and joy, and also times of great sorrow and mourning. Some of them I know celebrate a marriage or a birth while others I know mourn a passing or a heartbreak.
I can't help but feel disconnected from it despite knowing I'm likely destined to experience the exact same as them one day. To go from smiles to tears and from tears to smiles is strange to me, especially knowing all that stands in the way of either is merely a little time and the people we love.
It's difficult imagining just how much those I love have experienced in their lifetime. Heartbreak, loss, and pain, but also love, triumph, and happiness. It's all intermingled together like the lines on the palm of your hand, but I've noticed in the middle of those lines lies time. It weaves all our experiences together like an everchanging knot, yet everyone simply seems to ignore it as if it did not exist.
I've seen a frown turn into a smile, or tears be wiped away, or a seed blossom into a tree, or a chrysalis break open for a butterfly—if—given enough time. Do you think we know that if we only hold out for long enough, we'll find ease or repose or contentment in life? Do you think this "assurance" is ingrained in us, despite no one seems to talk about it? Or do you think time is only a byproduct of life to us; something of no concern or consequence until we're old and gray? I have to ask: Does that familiar wane of age frighten you?
Does it?
or
It does.
If I just wait long enough and watch each day as it passes by in all its unhurried swiftness, I'll find my joy or my pain ... both equally likely, aren't they? And yet I'm still here.
Waiting. Watching. Listening. Feeling.
I feel so deeply I fear my heart will collapse underneath its own weight. Indeed, I'm surprised it hasn't burst out from my ribcage yet. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before it splits open in my own hands for all the world to see. Then again, perhaps not.
I close my eyes and turn my face to the sun, breathing in deeply. Life is at its simplest and most peaceful when I hold my breath, or when I find its shallow depth at the end of my exhale. I shut my eyes to all the world—because when I open them, I see nothing but the finality of my time here. In seventy years, everything I will have done and everything I will have become will be insignificant. All my troubles will have been stripped away from me like the husk from an ear of corn. In only seventy years I'll be dead and all the struggles I will have ever faced will dissipate like the vapor from a morning fog.
I know when the dawn wakes me with the first note of the birds and the silver lining in the clouds has vanished from my eyes, I'd give anything to live like I am now. I'd give anything to be the epitome of youth again. Most assuredly, I know I'd give anything to enjoy the hugs I had never extended, the laughs I had never shared, the words I left unsaid, and the love I had never offered.
Life is moving like a sickle through a meadow. I can see as its blade glides across the pastures and drifts over the fields. But am I the one holding the blade's handle? I am not certain, and so I pray I meet all the good and all the bad. I pray I experience both triumph and defeat, both acceptance and rejection, both zeal and indifference, both calmness and terror, and indeed, both contentment and heartbreak.
Only a short while ago my heart bled. It poured out for indifferent people rather than for me. I've since stopped the bleeding and found my stillness. I've found my respite in the gulf between you and me. Only now, I wonder what it's like to be seen. I suppose I'll know in time; I just need to hold out for long enough. God willing, to be seen is to be loved. So I will wait. Whether patiently or impatiently, it makes no difference to me. Loved or seen, ease or sorrow, youth or maturity ... time will give me these things, regardless.
So I will wait - I will watch - I will listen - and I will feel.
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