I wonder…..
What worried you last week?
What weight are you carrying?
What condemnatory comments cling to you, corroborate the character flaws your inner critic recapitulates over and over until it spins your soul in seditious circles and lands you in the dismal land of dissonance?
What sinks you?
What stress assails you?
What pressed, pressed, pressed, until the old-I-thought-it-was-healed bruise burst open and grief burst forth in an ear-splitting wail that shocked you senseless?
What rang false, felt unfair?
What caused you to falter as frailty reunited with foreboding?
What tenderness and vulnerability slightly emerged and offered a glimpse into long shut spaces you didn’t even recognize?
And I wonder…..
Who?
Who sat and listened?
Who sang to your soul?
Who nodded and listened some more?
Who treasured your story, cupped it carefully in cradled palms, centered it in a circle of trust?
Who offered Kleenex?
Who wailed right along with you?
Who held you, tucked you closer, refused to let you go?
I find myself in a place where I am tired of pat answers. Insipid platitudes.
Weary of glib little tropes, common cliches.
So much feels off, muddled, clunky.
And how does a writer offer inspiration and encouragement when she doesn’t even know if she believes it herself?
There are reasons we are drawn to poets and musicians.
These souls who say the words for us, ask the questions, frame the experience.
Give life to haunting melody, express the hardship of living inside a progression of chords.
Maggie Smith writes in You Could Make This Place Beautiful,
“A friend says every book begins with an unanswerable question. Then what is mine?”
I wonder…
What unanswerable questions are you carrying?
J.K. Rowling pens this, “According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scars than almost anything else.”
I wonder…
What thoughts wind tendrils around you, etched, tattooed, until the truest truth about you flaps in tattered folds, windshook, forsook, overlooked, and trepidation tracks your trembling heartbeat and ragged, racing breath?
Every critical journey begins with a question.
A catalyst to launch us on our quest.
Every critical journey requires rest.
A respite, a renewal, a reawakening.
Every critical journey needs a who.
A Samwise Gamgee who carries when we can’t.