The Longing

At eight years of age I became aware of a brand new feeling. It was different from anything I had felt up to that point, and so strong I could not give it up to any other feeling. It was Roy Rogers who created this feeling in me. I had a scrap book which contained every picture I could find of him, and a Roy Rogers coloring book, and an album of Roy's finest songs. My family delighted in watching me swoon and giggle and squeeze that scrap book so tight it almost disappeared within the folds of my arms.

Up to that point, the feelings I had beyond basic needs were for my mother. They weren't too exciting; in fact, they were almost frightening because she was so important. These feelings carried with them a lot of worry, concern, responsibility, obligation and conditional behavior. I knew I needed her, but I never remember wanting to draw her within me because her smile was so bewitching or dazzling — her smile was just comforting and there. I can't say her voice ever sent shivers through me and made me remember things like going down a slide or over the top of a ferris wheel; her voice was the voice of my mother, pleasant and reassuring.

But back to Roy. Did he know me? It didn't really matter because in my dreams, my most wonderful day dreams, he not only knew me but chose me from all the others to be his. In those wonderful times of fantasy I called the feeling Love. And Love demanded this: the longing by one person and the choosing by the other.

I outgrew Roy and lived quite calmly for a while until about age fourteen. Then it was an actor, whose name slips me now, but who had that same effect on me. At twenty nine, it was an imaginary man I called Richard and fantasized over while folding the laundry.

In fantasy one searches out a place where one can meet the mind and heart of the other. At age six, it was Roy's heart and mind that I searched out. Yes, I was only six, but I was learning about passion, the fire of great love, the longing.

This great love, unlike ordinary love, was a feeling that made the difference. The longing for it hurt sometimes because the feeling was so unrequited; but even the pain felt good — knowing there was something beyond this silly and sometimes sad day-to-day existence.

I was not an ordinary child. Maybe there are no such things as `ordinary' children. I look at my family's albums and see that look in my eyes and know what was inside...it is still there now: a feeling there is more to me, more to life than we realize. But now I feel less alone in this because there are others who share it, understand it, because they too are haunted by something that won't let them be rooted in the concrete of this life.

Whatever lies beyond makes this life seem silly and cruel and unnecessary. Pain is all about you when you know life doesn't have to be lived like this. And the reason you know this is because you have glimpsed something different. So part of you is stuck with what is; part of you knows what could be — what is, but somewhere else. And it seems as if that 'somewhere else' is all around you like a backdrop. You breathe its air, feel its warmth, sense its love and wisdom. You can see it and feel it and know it's truth but you cannot grasp it because it is not yours alone. So it torments you — within you and yet not a part of you — the you that still lives in our day-to-day world.

I felt all this from childhood - but why?! If I was not a child when I was a child, and do not feel like an adult now when I am an adult, then what is this exercise of growing up?

My life would have been so simple if I didn't have this feeling of knowing, this longing within me. I have allowed myself to be directed by a force within that seems to be stronger than I. Allowed it because I have a sense that `it' knows more than I. Allowed it, but not totally enough to do the teaching. At the last second I become afraid of what will happen to me — I fear having to stand alone — and I am not brave enough to do that.

Does this all sound familiar to you? Do you go through each day asking yourself the questions: Am I right? or wrong? Am I wise, or foolish? Kind, greedy, saint or sinner? How can you find out? Whom do you ask? What should you believe?

And that feeling within. Do you know it also? The longing, the restlessness, the yearning for that place where love finds itself? Where the fire and passion of that moment is never ending yet all consuming? Where there is fulfillment, completion, an end to the longing,

the longing, the longing, the longing. . . . . .