For WDYS#170 and WDYS#171

Going Home Empty

First, visit the portal to seek your true self.

The words on the striated, hand-made paper slid away, replaced by a question mark.

“And what will I find there?” I’m assuming I need to ask a question, but the page doesn’t change. Maybe it’s asking the question, and waiting for the answer.

I follow the map on the back of the page to the location marked with a purple arrow and a faint drawing of a large-boled tree. The forest I enter is dark around me, heavy with colour and texture, trees fallen and splayed across the path, boulders blocking narrow gullies.

Image credit; Sylvian Sarrailh @ Digiartque

There is no missing the destination. My journey’s end glows blue from afar. Bright and welcoming, a distinct break from the gloom. I rush through the last part of my journey and stand before the rectangular block of light held firm and framed by stones that defy gravity. Yet I don’t walk forward, and hesitate on the verge of true knowledge. I dare not step from the slippery path to the ragged steps.

What does it take from you if you know your true self?

Lessons are what life is about. Wisdom is earned through the doing and living, an experience of life that’s not easy or safe. Risks taken, lessons learned, loves and losses.

This page shows me a portal to something else, an entry or entity that offer a path to seek my true self. Do I want to know? Can I walk away?

Light gathers in the mirrored surface, clouds bloom and blossom, a brighter white than possible. I shade my eyes and blink until I see clearly. It isn’t a mirror, nor a portal. The light from within is a land of opportunity, a place of hope and promise. If I step through into that world I’d become. Just that. Become. The true self that lies within.

Yet I turn away, walk back through the darkening forest toward home. The paper slips from my fingers and falls upon a mound of moss. I walk on, leaving the pale splash of light within the darkness as a message of context, there for the next soul to discover, or to let it return to the soil from whence it birthed. Such is life.

I may not be a whole man, but I am a man willing to deny the easy path because … because I love a challenge. Life is that challenge. Seeking is part of life. Answers … not so much.

I can find my true self in my own world through the work I do, the people I share it with, and the knowledge that there is something beyond that awaits us all. I may not be whole, but I shall work a piece of life into each part of myself that is a puzzle and I will enjoy each hard-won lesson, each warm hug, and every moment I breathe the path of life. I shall fill my true self with a life well-lived.

An image of; Not All There – The Enigmatic
Sculptures of Bruno Catalano

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