What's In My Heart Must Come Out

One elusive thing I've yearned for since my youth is understanding. I wanted to be understood and understand why. Why did I exist, yet feel like I didn't?

So many philosophers, scholars, and writers spent lifetimes searching. Their results are dissonant, unsatisfactory, inconclusive. What chance did I have? How could I discover such a slippery, possibly nonexistent, thing? What makes me so special that I would come to know?

I only knew I wanted to read and write, mostly nonfiction, about life, because that's what mattered. I found schools and classes to be too superficial and time consuming. Roads leading nowhere.

So, I would take the road less traveled, leading myself, when I felt the courage. It's a lonely, narrow path, not a road. But, perhaps a slow death (suffering poison ivy, harsh sun, droughts, hail, and other natural disasters) is the entry way to a life worth living; the examined life. Perhaps with a sudden realization, life would feel like I'm flying with understanding in my wings.

Through writing, I just knew, instinctively, there was purpose. How could I be touched by a story if not? So I asked myself, could I touch someone else's heart? I knew the answer, and it scared me; only if what was in my heart got out, genuinely, vulnerably, boldly, and completely. I would then understand my life, and through me you would understand yourself, and we would see that deep down, through God, our hearts are intimately united.

Until then, at least partially, and with few windows, walls are built and fortified, keeping others out and at a distance. We call this distance our personal space and comfort zone. We accept and barely question this distance, and hardly know what's inside it. We build our own prisons and forget where we hid the key. I will not give up until I find mine.