Chasing The Promise Of Happiness

This blank page is overwhelming today. I am empty. The only thing that moves me is the music. I feel like tearing off my clothes and being in bed all day where no one will see me. I have a pain in my gut and my back is aching – sitting here at a coffee table. I push myself more into the back of the bench. The man next to me has pushed his table too close to mine. I’m thinking of packing everything up.
I take another sip of my chai tea with soy milk. No frills. Nothing extra. I have nothing to give. I am spent. I sit here as an alternative to going home and being impatient with my mother. I am angry that she forgets so much – angry that she is not there for me. My neck is stiff as I turn to look outside. I have no energy to even call a friend.
The music fades into quiet for a few moments. I find myself craving that silent space. Now a woman’s voice fills the space. “I’ll do what I want…” I am surprised to find out that I don’t know what I want. Tears well up behind my eyes trying to speak to me. I don’t understand them.
Music is the one thing that stirs me. There is a purity in the voices. There is strength and power in the beat. I need that strength. I am trying to solve the puzzle of this thing called life. The fact that I am now 60 years old hovers over me. What is the point of it all? Money dictates what I do. It has nothing to do with what is important to me. I want to throw things and change how I spend my time. I want to hear the music that moves my soul.
Time passes. We all die. Some of us are remembered. My tears are getting impatient with me. I am frozen in passivity somewhere deep inside – letting time pass. It always has. I am used to that. I have spent years being unhappy. It is so familiar – almost safe to let life pass without a peep. Just live each day as it is given – not complaining – just bending like the willow. There is a time for that but I am 60 years old now. Now is not that time.
Reggae music sings out “What you going to do when your well runs dry?” There it is. That is my question to myself. And I am feeling dry. Empty. Blank. I force myself to do things that do not feel right. I say to myself that I have to be patient a little longer – that I am working on it.
There is an explosion in me. I don’t have the time. I do not have the answers. I feel the unrest.  I have made a hundred new decisions. I need to let the tears come. They will have answers. They have been pushed down for way too long.
I need to be an oak tree. An oak tree with roots that find water wherever it is. An oak tree that does not budge. Committed to myself. Reaching down deep to find my own wisdom. No one else can give me what I need now. I must give it to myself. I bow down to the power of the oak and gather my years of experience on this planet. Perhaps faith is really just remembering.