I have a yearning. Let me explain.
Sometimes I like to sit and think about the first courageous amoeba who ventured from the dank primordial soup of early life onto land. What a brave little fellow he must have been all those eons ago to have left the comfort and warmth of the soup and to venture into the open air. An uncomplex soul, he then, of course, progressed up the evolutionary tree, growing a spine, standing upright so he could reach the bananas, shedding some hair before finally becoming…us.
What went through his simple-celled mind ? What drew him from his comfortable existence flopping about in the fetid detritus towards an undoubtedly more complicated and painful life on solid ground?
I’ll tell you what it was. It was a yearning!
This yearning is a visceral need to go further, in spite of compelling evidence to suggest it would be so much nicer to stay put.
It was inexplicably at the little amoeba’s minute core.
We all yearn. We do, don’t we?
It’s always there. It’s the background soundtrack to our lives as we go through the motions of doing our tax and rushing to meet up with friends.
We yearn our way out of our mum’s womb to oxygenated life. We exist because we yearn. And our existence is characterized by our yearning. (Although granted some of are able to put on a better make of sound-blocking earphones, happy to ignore the incessant buzzing. And about three times in any given week I envy such people this most sweet aptitude.)
When I was two, I’m sure it was my yearning that saw me strop out of my room at night to stand in front of Dad and yell my first word: Nooooooo! Looking back now I’m pretty certain what I was trying to say was, “There is more to life than this. I just know it. More to grasp, more to contribute. I won’t be put down to bed. There’s more.”
This yearning – The Yearning – is a visceral sense there’s something else to life. A something else we’re not attending to, and that we have a hunger to reach out to.
This hunger still grips me today and it still sees me scream out “Noooooo!” when life gets too “surface-skimming”. I quit things, I tell people to shove it, I walk from opportunities, I take off, I jump into risk, I seek new minds.
Of course, I try to block out the Yearning quite regularly because it is more comfortable in the warm detritus of 9-5 work days and daily commutes and weekends spent filling in time at shopping malls. I would like to potter along, sometimes. To put on the sound-blocking earphones. But, really, there’s no point. Once you’re on the path, as many masters say, there’s no turning back.
At the moment I’m struggling to settle the inevitable tug of my yearning with a desire for more “everydayness” in my life. I’m trying to find the sweet spot where I can have both, and one complements the other.
I realise today’s post is a little esoteric, but hopefully you know the “pull” of “something more” that I’m talking about…Yes?
