In The Quiet of Being

In a previous entry, I wrote how I loathed my perception of myself. It think this disdain must be examined further for in lies some hidden truth about my quest for meaning. I have heard it said that you cannot give or receive love until you love yourself. I always thought of that kind of reasoning to be too soppy to be true. I thought it was natural to love oneself, even someone who commits suicide does so not because she hates herself but because she loves her life too much to continue in pain. But there are many types of love, I'm not referring here to the difference between the love of a mother or a sibling, a friend or a lover--the various objects of love, but rather the variety of intentions of love.

Some are intent on possession and control, others oneness or destruction and then there are many who simply desire with an intensity that appears to be love because it burns so strongly. The latter is commonly called lust, which has come to have a sexual connotation exclusively but I think there is another kind of lust. It is a mix of fantasy and longing just as regular lust, but this lust covets the ideal. It refuses to see imperfection until it is forced to in the intimacy of that long awaited embrace; it is then that familiarity truly breeds contempt.

In my opinion, most people lust after themselves only to realize they were not who they hoped they would be and then they quickly come to despise themselves with an intensity that far surpasses the that lust. This is what I believe has happened to me. The few times in my life that I have lifted the veil that shrouded my being, I was appalled to find the grotesque features of an imperfect face staring back at me. This is why I prefer the state of becoming to that of being. I spend my life in the pursuit of attainment never relenting for one moment to embrace my being. Before I have completed a task, I am already engulfed in another. My life has become a series of refinements and readjustments rather than a project. I am continual on a diet but am afraid to step on the scale and weigh the choices that comprise who I am. I study and research but seldom apply my knowledge. I define myself with verbs such as seeking, learning and contemplating but never with nouns which I fear will shed to much light on my darkness.

With this relentless running how can I have time to realize who I am now. How can I love what I cannot hold for even a moment. I had hoped that in the pursuit of attainment there would be meaning enough or a least ample distraction but there is not. One cannot help but look back periodically to find the way forward--a trajectory that thrusts one higher at a definite angle but there is no such thing when I look back on my life presently just a thousand random acts events hung together like notes scribbled frantically on a staff, it can neither be called a song nor a life. Despite this feeling, this pungent disappointment, I must tune out all the superfluous sounds and listen for my life. Perhaps, it is the deafening noise of a distracted life, a life spend on becoming, that I loathe and not the authentic me. Perhaps it is in the quiet of being that the true melody of my life will emerge.