1 January 2008
Today is January 1st, 2008. It is 12:40am and I am sitting on the cold carpeted floor of my colorful bedroom in my beautiful home in the dead of winter in Dayton, Iowa. The chill and late nights are beginning to get to me and I can feel my throat tightening and grinding with each inhale and exhale. This past semester has trained my body and mind to stay awake late, and I'm finding it hard to break that habit here at "home."
As I listen to the sounds of a noisy heater and quiet house, my mind races with eagerness for the future. The past months have been tough -- full of illness, regrets, and let-downs -- yet I feel I've learned and loved so much. I have had a taste and I want more. Every romantic plotline, in film, song, or prose brings my heart to teeth, pounding with fury at the taste of love and adventure and life. I can hardly wait to see what life will bring me. Though I've made some hefty mistakes, I am more resolved and determined than ever to both seek the best and let the tao do its thing. My Heavenly Father has blessed me so much and I want to find a way to let go and let Him lead me as I skip after with childlike eagerness and heart.
I want to make something, do something, be something! I am not out to change the world, but to change myself and to mean something to somebody. I want to offer myself up and be some kind of sliver of truth -- to be a part of something beautiful, to give hope and to give light.
Though I love my life at BYUH, I can't imagine staying in one place for long. I want to travel and study -- see what this glorious earth and its brilliant lives have to offer. I want to fall in love with a set of mountains, to dig my toes in the sand of a beach, to lie in a lush meadow, to grace my eyes with the arts and sounds of architects and poets. I want to feel the earth and taste the sky with every day -- to dance with joy at the sun and the rain and the moon, marvelling at a majesty far grander than my own comprehension.
While my mind has wandered into a field of daffodils and kisses, my toes are becoming numb and my toosh sore from the concrete below the abused grey carpet. My sleepy eyes burn and my nose drips a little. I am brought back to the present where I am unhappy with my body, my living arrangements, with my past, and with the weather. The future, full of realized hopes and dreams, seems so warm and inviting. A bout of chills shakes my being and the tiny goosebumps covering my skin remind me where I am: now. the tao. here. this moment. Soon it will be gone and never another quite like it. Men are that they might have joy, now.
So what am I waiting for?
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