It is easier to fly away, than to stay. It is so tempting, to not be here. It is easier to fly away from ourselves, with all its thoughts and feelings, to somewhere else where we do not need to pay them any attention, or acknowledge they exist, as if those feelings were annoying children, or children that we pretend aren't even our own. Who's damn kids are these anyway??
So we jet off into the hazy skies of distractions, that we don't even consider to be distractions; just the necessary elements of life that we must tend to: work to be done, children to be looked after, bins to be put out, dinners to be made, laundry to be done, friends to be met, tv shows to be caught up on, purchases to be made, sleep to be slept, holidays to be had.
We fly into the haze, to another place that is not our place, into a vacation that is no holiday at all; like one of those trips, that ends up exhausting and exasperating, as we drag ourselves and our other or others around, ticking off the to-do-list of the successful tourist, with no time to waste, and nothing to be left out, ready for the next social presentation, because we need to make sure that everyone knows we had a good time, when really what we did was a good job. We return home exhausted and get back into it, into the bustle of our lives, the necessary bustle of our lives, the bustle that we complain about but couldn't live without. Afterall, where would we be without it?
Maybe it is time to come home. Come back home. To return, from places that are not our place. To descend from the hazy skies, and the bustle of our lives, and come in to land. To ground ourselves in the ordinary landscape of our souls. A place where we can listen to those fucking annoying kids, and learn to accept them as our own, maybe even love them. A place where the feelings that once felt like terrorists threatening the benevolent order, actually start to sound more like prophetic voices that point to the oppressive tyranny you had been living under all this time. A regime where you couldn't breathe; you could not breathe, and your soul could not stir. Even then, you had the prophet locked up and silenced, her writings burned or redacted, but her words were already in the aether of your mind, and you could not unhear her words, and the ember within you was finding air in them.
That ember glowed, in your darkest places, and it would burn you sometimes when you weren't looking where you were going. You would be on your own, lost in a screen, and a stranger would tap you on the shoulder. The strange feeling, of a feeling. The strange feeling of a true feeling, of a feeling that is yours and only yours, and all of a sudden you are no longer delighted that the sad man, with the horrible story, had the voice of an angel and was picked by the judges, because now it is as if the test has arrived, and those kids are your kids. The kids you denied, disowned and disavowed; that were neglected, because life is so hard and you have been trying to cope, but they do not want to be ignored any longer. They want to be seen, to be known, to find themselves in your gaze and be found acceptable. They are calling you to come home to them.
It is time to come back home. To stay. To fall in love with what is already here, and always was.
