I looked into his tired eyes, wrapped in shadow, tinted by an old wound, one he faintly remembered yet one which still had the power to cast its shadow over his life. Young, in his mid-20s, not yet to college, he was about 1,000 miles from his mother and his home, chasing a dream - as young men are prone to do. He shared his discomfort with his current job and lightly touched on a dream he occasionally dared to stretch his imagination around, but only just a bit. It was something he'd always wanted to do. But, that dream was aborted time and time again as he diminished his own ability to find work once he'd attained all the education he needed to pursue it.
The young man's father had died when he was five and he only barely remembered his dad. He had older brothers and sisters and his mother had deeply loved his father. That was all he told me about his father. His mother, who he described in loving terms, sounded like an artistic, creative loving woman, who cares deeply about her son, enough to give him the loving space to follow his dream - even to the west coast. She had been an English teacher, following her own creative literary dreams, when her husband died. Family financial pressures forced her into a business career which she greeted kindly while wistfully longing for her former life in the classroom, among ideas and words and a home with her husband and children. Those days were gone now, never to return. Even more than 20 years later, she had never remarried.
But, why the dark circles, the sad eyes? I wondered. Is it that this gentle, proud and brilliant young man didn't know who he was? I wondered. He couldn't see his own genius as he pursued an illusive other, a dream that drew him further and further away from his origins and his self.
The young man's father had died when he was five and he only barely remembered his dad. He had older brothers and sisters and his mother had deeply loved his father. That was all he told me about his father. His mother, who he described in loving terms, sounded like an artistic, creative loving woman, who cares deeply about her son, enough to give him the loving space to follow his dream - even to the west coast. She had been an English teacher, following her own creative literary dreams, when her husband died. Family financial pressures forced her into a business career which she greeted kindly while wistfully longing for her former life in the classroom, among ideas and words and a home with her husband and children. Those days were gone now, never to return. Even more than 20 years later, she had never remarried.
But, why the dark circles, the sad eyes? I wondered. Is it that this gentle, proud and brilliant young man didn't know who he was? I wondered. He couldn't see his own genius as he pursued an illusive other, a dream that drew him further and further away from his origins and his self.
Was he a modern-day Don Quixote chasing his own Dulcinea? What in a man does an illusive woman represent? What unrealized aspect of his own self, is she? Whose love is he really seeking, longing for? I wondered. Why does anyone do that? What is it we really seek and don't find, that propels the endless odyssey? What could stop the pursuit? What could end the fruitless pursuit and set this dear young man back on course with his dream, a path he must resume?
What causes any one of us to seek and never find? Is it possible to find the source of that unfulfilled longing and somehow, through our creative imagination, rewrite that moment in our own personal history, that moment when that initial wound was created, and somehow steer ourselves back onto the course that would allow us to realize success in finding/attaining what we really seek and need for our lives?
How long are we to be in the wasteland before we lose confidence in our ability - or even value the dream at all - to achieve what we need for our lives to be successful in drawing out of us our creative talents which themselves allow us to open our hearts to our true selves? The longer in the wasteland, I think, the harder it is to correct the fallacy that we have invested in believing about ourselves that we are somehow unable or not good enough to have what we really want and need, which, in this case, is this young man's dream to be a computer game designer.
While the pursuit is indicative of our own illusive search for meaning in this life, it has a negative affect on one's ability to achieve their dream. The longer it hangs out there, unattainable, yet teasingly present, the less we believe in our ability to fulfill our longing. Even my playful cat will eventually give up on catching the laser light from his toy. He'll try again and again to catch it, but eventually he gives up and goes back to sleep. Is it like that with us?
Gnosticism, Jungian psychology and South American Shamanism would point us back to that moment in our lives when we were disconnected from our source of emotional sustenance, when a fragment of our essential self - our soul - was left behind. We don't need to have had an abusive parent to have been cut off, although for others that will do it. The death of a father is certainly the most powerful event in anyone's life. I will never recover from the death of my own father. It still breaks my heart. I loved him so much and he was the catalyst for so much of who I am. For a boy to lose his father is the greatest of wounds.
If my young friend could go back to those early years and realize again his own father's love, allow himself to crawl up into his dad's lap, and show his father his dream for his life now, his desire to pursue a creative career and listen to what his father would say to him. In the deepest part of his soul and imagination his father's wisdom is there. He can draw on it in his imagination. It is into the imagination that our departed parents do really speak, in real time, yet in a past setting. What would his father say to him? Could he feel his father's love and his father's wisdom and would that comfort his longing soul? What would his father say to him about his relationships with women? How would his father affirm him and show him, even in a lingering glance, how much he loved his mother? Would his father's glance point him in the direction of his own heart for another?
I truly believe that our present is molded out of our memories of our past. If we can revisit those memories and rewrite them in our imaginations, can we change our present? If, by rewriting them, we are able to open our hearts now, hearts which were once closed due to a traumatic childhood loss when we were too young to know what was happening and those around us were too grief stricken to help us, can we experience the awesome power of real love, of God's creative potential and power in our lives, to achieve our dreams and fulfill our heart's desire in our lives?
That question lingers in my heart and mind as I listen to the young man. I may suggest it or I may not. I may wait until he wants to find the answer to his life, when the endless quest no longer opens up a vast inner world of longing. When he is ready, he will find the answer. That answer can be found. God has promised that one. And, is it possible that his long lingering journey, away from where the wound was first experienced, is his own personal dark night of the soul in his search for himself? How long do we linger in the desert? How long do we odyssey, until we find our way back home? Long enough. 40 years? 40 days? As long as it takes.
In the meantime, wisdom listens and loves and hopes and sends light for his journey. Blessed is he who seeks, for he will find and be found.
Good to see that you're writing again. Only two last month. Continue to seek and we may find each other in the same city or village again.
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