Clamor

And what is it my heart is crying out for?

Let me listen to it, monstrous world. Quiet down a little so I can pay attention to me.

Because as far as I have managed to see in my desperate effort, all I've recognized is that I don't know what I want.

I live without knowing who I am, without a floor beneath my feet or a stone beneath my head. I live in an empty everyday, unliving myself over an absurd competition for my survival, absorbed in a ridiculous drama of trying to hold up my personal history, my social status and the name of my identity.

I have followed those who promise me utopias and fled from them when they carry out their intentions with raw realism. I have fought under the storm to clear the skies and received only more thunder and lightning. I have preached moralisms seeking a peace I don't know, yet fantasize about having found by talking as if I knew it.

What are you saying, heart? What do you want to express when you burn my chest, your rhythm speeding up the dizziness of running around in so many circles of so much pain?

But I turn around and stop. I step away from the world to contemplate the mystery that beats inside me.

I cannot stop the wheel that keeps sifting recurring nightmares down on me, but I can stop myself. I cannot change anything, but I can contemplate what is. I cannot stop perceiving what is loudest, but before that I can listen to what is closest.

The effort ceases. Not because my effort ceases, but because I use the effort to, in each instant, make no effort.

And I listen to my heart.

Inside me, beneath a dusty layer of unfinished emotions, the haphazard laments of a badly written story, and beneath the futile helplessness of trying to control my voice, my spark of life cries out in the wilderness.

Then I hear that the song of my being was not pain; it is gratitude.

The fire of my essence shines in blessings, in clarity, in joy.

I lift my head, open my chest, clear my throat. My heart is singing.

Thank you, world. Thank you, heart. Thank you, unconditional and ineffable peace.