I’ve mentioned here before that I have never fully engaged
with anything in my life, and that’s because nothing was ever sufficient to
warrant full engagement, not even during the best of times when life was dripping with milk and honey. So does that make me a greedy lout who just wanted
more and more of the good things? No, it wasn’t like that.
What I always felt was that even the best of things had
something thin and superficial about them, and what I wanted was not more of
the good things, but that mysterious something-or-other which lay beyond them. I would
stand on top of a mountain and regard the distant view of lakes and woods and
further mountains, and feel that the whole thing was a two dimensional image
hiding a deeper reality. I would listen to a piece of music by Vaughan Williams
and fancy that I could almost taste that reality, even though I couldn’t see it. I
felt that my life was a constant search for it, but I didn’t know where to
look. And so I never fully engaged with the things I could have because they were blocking the true quest.
And that’s why I envy those people who can
still engage with life for its own sake, and be content with it, in spite of being disabled,
impoverished, or beset by an endless variety of other difficulties greater than mine. I suppose I
should have concentrated on being grateful for my health, strength and
capabilities instead of pining for something which is both too subtle and too
substantial to exist in this mortal realm. But is that a reasonable proposal or
just a lame and pointless apology for my separateness? I don’t know. All I know
is that being brought low by the vicissitudes endemic to the material form is
keeping me further from my quest. And that’s probably as good an excuse as any
for being wimpy.
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