authentic self

 the authentic self is really our only path we have to find salvation... so many of us are desperately trying to find ourselves... without being whole we can never be a part of a half...

each time i hear this song it brings me another "gift".  thoughts of how singular our lives are.  how connected we all can be.   how important that odd connection is.   

 singular, we want to be complete. we want to be good company to ourselves.  we want to amuse ourselves in our own heads and experiences.  we want memories to be like a warm dip into the hot springs.   acceptance and happiness instead of regrets or loneliness for what is gone or greediness because it didn't last as long as we wanted it to.  or sadness because in the singularity we find ourselves, we feel an empty instead of a blessing.

we get so tied up in day to day "have to's" that we lose pieces of ourselves.  or we forget them, thinking that we can find them again when and if we have the time.  every now and then we think back and wonder where did i go?   i really liked me then.  now i don't even know me. sometimes it takes so long to remember, that we are not even sure it is really us we are remembering.  perhaps it was a dream of what we needed to be exactly how we wanted to be but knew we couldn't really be.

family and friends.  i grew up in the LDS church and had the "families are forever" mantra drilled into my head from the moment i walked through the threshold of  the 5th ward.  i never learned to think of forever.   life changes too much, too fast. how could anything last forever? i never could wrap my head around that belief.   friends disappear, die,  lovers dissolve, seasons betray me.  i am 50 next year,  do you know i still naively believe  in the endless summer?   i am  so stunned as i look out the window and see the trees changing colors and settling down for the winter to come.  i am doing that as i speak, beautiful yellow with a back drop of still green trees.  I sip my wine in disbelief. and ponder things i can't express.

children.  they are the most wonderful experiences i have or will ever have in my life.  yet with every day you teach them to learn to live without you, away from you, singular and hopefully whole in their singularity.  when i think about them, i miss every single day of their lives.  every laugh, every tear and i pray.  i pray that they are on their own journey of self.  i pray that there will be more times that i share with them to add to my book of memories.  but forever just doesn't fit inside the cover of the book of my life.   even the bible has a back cover.