Aspire

I do not compare myself to this extraordinary human being. As I write this,saying what I'm about to say, I risk the ridicule of those who would read this saying, "of course you're comparing yourself to him Robert, why else would you be writing this, suggesting it!"

He has been an obsession of mine for some time now and, God help me, he sinks into my deepest thoughts whenever I embark on a totally absurd, seemingly irrational endeavor toward my reason for being.

What is it like to have a "calling" that makes absolutely no sense to anyone else on the face of the Earth?

What is it that allows one to walk away from so many of the things that drive almost every living soul on Earth; the accumulations, the friends, the trips to exotic destinations...even ordinary places, "success" as we have all come to have it defined; tangible acquirement, the "approved" and much sought after fruits of one's labors at once and over a lifetime?
More frightening for myself, what is like to not even have the semblance of an established, physical presence; a cathedral built with one's own two hands, as a testament to what one's life has been built upon?

Ironically, that thought alone drives me closer, not farther away from this amazing soul.

I do not compare. I aspire.
I am not "Christ on Earth" when I seek to love someone unconditionally. I am failed and flawed, like every other human being in this world. I try with all my heart and every bit of my soul to be "perfect', to travel a path of good, of selflessness, of compassion. There are times, often, I stumble off that path, yet somehow, I pull myself up and I continue. I carry on "building my cathedral".

We all do.

Yet mine continues to exist only within my being; huge, massive columns of hand built rigor, unfinished frameworks lying dormant while I work at another apart of my massive, unfinished building. I ask for help seldom, and when I do, I suffer agony at my inability to return the favor to those who have lent me a hand in this insanity that is my mission.

I feel the scorn, the pity, the endless ridicule, mostly feigned as "helpful advise" from those on the other path...that path that most others follow religiously...that of proper attainment, collective production that feeds our society so that we all grow and prosper...in the same way. Yet, selfishly, here I am, standing there in my "cloisters" looking up at the massive structure that will never be completed, wondering what new project I will obsess about today.

The only semblance of physical, tangible proof of my God-given abilities on this earth wrest within sentences and paragraphs; poems and essays like this, many "published" within an electronic "vaporage"; all but a pitiful few souls have ignored. It is an embarrassing humiliation to even mention it while barely considering how a nanogenarian monk carves with his own bare hands framework for an edifice that at once makes cynical fools break down and cry as they see it in person. Who am I to creatively suggest I am even understanding of such a man?

And yet, here I am watching this new essay on video, hands shaking, skin tingling, eyes moist...doing what we all do, wrestling with our own self-narrative as we watch others engage within there's. We, all of us pretend to live lives that seek to put others first, yet on our deathbeds we are as we are...alone with our thoughts, praying to God in heaven we lived outside ourselves...the most selfish irony of our existence; self-immortality and a place for ourselves to be recognized as "passed ourselves". So, not one of us is immune from our own vision of all things that orbit our lives; everything does. We all seek to find OUR mission, our selfish purpose and it is so that we can lay our own head on its final resting place knowing this "mortal coil" of ours actually existed.

So, here I sit, in my den, yet again reflecting on the day God reflected, selfishly suggesting I reflect like God, when in fact we all do. And here I am watching a man finish his life in a folly, knowingly ridiculed by the most ironic human beings on Earth; those that acquire the stuff dictated by all that surrounds them and terrified more than I that just maybe, life and its true purpose may extend past exotic trips, four-car garages and tangible assets.

My most gut-wrenching thought is that I express too honestly, both in words and in action that life has to be about more than keeping the electricity on so as to write this screed....the immense ridicule I feel as some of my most cyclical "friends" read these things and cast me aside with the same indifference as any other eccentric soul.

Given that thought...that terror from within...I could care less, in the end, if one thinks me the narcissist for comparing myself to any soul on Earth, or just another traveler here grasping for a purpose beyond themselves, build their own cathedral.

In the end, as I lay my head down for good, I shall know all I I ever did was aspire.