When I was younger, I hungered for information. I wanted wisdom desperately. I watched, I listened, I asked, I learned as much as I possibly could. I challenged everyone on practically everything. I had no desire to please my peers, or to seek out their approval. Where I turned to approval from, were people who had achieved, as far as my young person's brain could process: joyful marriages, joyful parenting, PHD's, doctors, etc etc etc. If you were joyfully succeeding in the world, I wanted your approval. Perhaps that's still true today.
My priest asked me who I turn to when I'm in need. The honest answer was no one. The conversation was striking, as I heard myself acknowledging, out loud, that simple truth. My children asked me a similar question that evening (a sign that the lesson really needed to be driven home) Mommy? Who knows you best? "I don't know.... No one."
I don't talk about myself. I like to make people laugh, and I love to listen, but there is oh so little to share, and oh so much at the exact same time, and words are solid. They're concrete. They can't be unspoken. For every opinion I have, there's an opposite. How can I speak words that are evolving? How can I formulate thoughts that are changing? How can I declare anything to anyone when what I "think" might be different in the next moment?
About the only concrete I have is Love. God's Love, and the love I hold in my heart for others. It's the solid foundation that exists, in my brain, in a verbal context. I can Love, clearly, because it's been firmly resolved. It isn't a question, but an action. I do it with the fiercest energy I have in my bones. I hope I do it well.
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