There are moments when I visualize myself standing in the middle of a crowded plaza or railway station. I stand there looking up and around, not really sure of what I am doing or where I am going. I am surrounded by people who are walking with a sense of purpose towards their very real and fulfilling lives while I stand there lost among the rest.
Sometimes the sky is a piercing shade of blue and sometimes it is black and filled with ominous looking thunderclouds. I stand there lost among the rest and wonder if I shouldn’t be Mickey Mouse in Fantasia conducting some sort of wacky and crazed opera.
I stand there lost among the rest and ask questions but I get no answers. The questions are always the same. It is a search for purpose and for meaning. Questions that I never used to ask because the answers were obvious, but not anymore.
A quest, a search for the things that are missing is what I am on, but I stand lost among the rest. Watching and waiting for that moment. That one moment in which I’ll find the thing that gives me peace. Because I know that peace is out there. I know that if I hold fast I’ll find that thing again, that thing I had as a child.
That trust in the world and in those around me that it works. Right now that trust has been broken, shattered and all that I had believed is in flux. The choices that I have made and the decisions that I am going to make all hinge upon a few things.
Still I stand there, lost among the rest. The world is spinning faster and faster and I can do no more than silently scream and wonder how much longer I can take the strikes upon my back. Soon I must break or turn my face to the sky and roar in frustration.
Intellectually I know that this is nothing more than a moment. This is the stuff upon which character is built. That is not hyperbole or cliche but fact. So I stand with my jaw and fists clenched and remind myself that the voices whispering in my head do not have to be heeded.
One day this time will be nothing more than a story that I tell, but I hope that it happens sooner rather than later.
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