Swallowing the whole world

A great majority of our lives are spent discovering who and what we are NOT. We feel great satisfaction in stripping this crap away—layers of an onion or a parfait, and at the end we discover roots that make us cry or berries or yogurt that could be confused with pig fat and our lives have meaning because we have all the sudden brushed off our hands the sheet rock of the excruciating work of discovering the core of ourselves.

Sometimes, we forget, what we got; who we are, and who we are not. There is so much more in love than black and white… (AMOS LEE)

When we uncover a shred of the black or the white we sit back with beads of sweat dripping down the rocking chair. At this point, one of two things happens:

1. We feel content, for the moment, and can gulp a glass of water and doze off, or, 2. We feel ravenous and feverish with a beastly desire to swallow the whole world so we can know all the shades of gray, too.

Usually, my discoveries take the form of the latter—and I’m okay with that.