M,

 

 Life gets to everyone in the end.
There is no escaping it. We will not always be happy. We will not always see
the point of things. We will not always be at our best and we will not always
feel like carrying on or standing up or doing the right thing. It will not
always connect or make sense. In fact, perhaps the good feeling or good sense
of satiation or completeness is special because it is rare. Something in the
human heart or soul will never be satisfied with the small trinkets of ordinary
life. Even at the summit of any achievement, there is the small and beautiful
letdown, telling us: this is not enough.

 

There is not enough juice in the world to occupy our hungry soul. We need
to live in constant intoxication or fantasy or on the soft side of delusion to
act even remotely at peace with our present state. On one side, this is just
the human discomfort. We are looking for feelings and successes and relevance
and position and to be remembered. We need to find something, in our complex
and evolutionary brain, that truly matters and truly adds up. On the other
hand, it is a picture of a place we have never been. It tells us we are made
for more.

 

This second part is my daily dose of joy. It reminds me that there is
something beyond the coil of human experience. At the core of all this longing
and searching is a destination. It is clearer to me that the name I am called
is just a shell for the experience I am having at this moment in mutable time. These
cracks, as Leonard put it, are just how the light gets in. I am made of the same
stuff as the universe and the voyage inside is just as memorable and decisive
as anything I will attempt on the outside.