If I could sit across from my twenty-year-old self and speak honestly about the spiritual life, what would I say?
I see it clearly. We walk toward each other and embrace, and then we sit and talk. We talk and talk and fill the night with our philosophies. What fun, what exuberance. We talk about the hard-to-answer questions. He wants to know the answers. I’m glad to share my thoughts, but I tell him they can’t carry much weight for him because any answers you haven’t figured out aren’t yours. Real answers can’t be given, only learned.
I am amazed at his dedication, burning through books in his thirst for wisdom, consumed with a desire to know how the cosmos works and what it wants from him. I remember. There’s a momentum in his passion that feels like running. I want to tell him he can slow down, but maybe that’s how he’s figuring it out, grinding grain at the mill to find the kernel of truth. So I tell him to keep going.
“Love yourself,” I want to say, but don’t. It’s one of the real answers, a cliché until you find your own way in. It was my biggest stumbling block for a long time. I recognize the forward pressure in his striving, running toward enlightenment while running from yourself. All the corroded bits I stuffed into the cracks of my psyche, that, really, this spiritual seeking was a way to look good while I hid the truth: I was a shit. Running was how I covered my tracks.
So, so much wasted effort, running from those ancient, rusted-out beliefs. I could weep for the waste, though I guess it was necessary. Perhaps the lesson was to deepen empathy for everyone who stuffs themselves with some version of the poison. Which is everyone. Maybe I was running from the burden on my back so I could know the breaking weight of others and weep for them, forgive the misguided steps they took running from themselves.
Near the end, we stand. I can’t hold my peace, I say, “Listen. Love yourself.”
He nods quickly. “I know, I know. I do.”
I move in and take his face in my hands. “No. Really. Love yourself. I’m here, it’s me. I love you. I love you.” And we part. He can’t hear it fully, yet. But the seed is planted.
God, what a great kid. He’s got a lot of potential. He’ll figure it out.
Thank you to my friend and colleague, Veronika Tracy-Smith, PhD, for her beautiful question. It’s part of a spiritual survey she uses in her ongoing work helping people find their authentic self.
Photo by Paul Zoetemeijer on Unsplash