Searching from

The other day, it occurred to me that maybe I’m not searching for, but ‘searching from’. I wonder if a search is not a flight. If it is not a statement, a recognition that I don’t want to be ‘here’. A void, silent and permanent. I wonder, once again, if a search is not an evasion, a lame excuse to avoid acceptance. Intuitively, I know all answers are already here. And yet, I ‘search from’ here because I’d rather be anywhere else. Jung’s soul was right: wait. Action through non action.

Every search is the acknowledgement of a failure within ourselves or at least a want. A hole, a gap, big or small, that we need to fill. We search to get away from this feeling of incompleteness. We recognise and accept that we are not complete.

A search is the acceptance of change and the acceptance of the need for change. It also expresses an expectation and, ultimately, a hope. Faith and confidence that our situation, whatever this might be, can be different and that change will occur.

T.S. Elliot said we start from an end. An end of our previous condition is the first step of our changed self. Regardless of the magnitude of that change, we are different. The search changes us. First, by admitting we want to change and therefore by ending a chapter. Second, by incorporating all those hints, lessons that we find in our search, however far or close. Every search is a death of our previous self, at least a part of it that will cease to exist. The person we were before we started will no longer be. Every step we take changes us, even if just a little. With every step we kill our previous self and give birth to a new one.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Thomas S. Elliot, Quartet No. 4: Little Gidding (V)

A searching soul is never ‘here’. Always wandering. Always somewhere else. Somebody else.

With this ‘journey’ of mine, am I fleeing from myself or am I getting closer? I actively look for a change, for an inner completeness I do not have. Why else would I search? I still believe I can find the key that opens the door that brings me to the chest that contains the key to another room that leads to another corridor and to another door, another key, another door, in an endless cycle.

Maybe searching is not an action. Maybe I have to stop and allow myself to be found. To stop. To wait. Not to search. To be searched. To stop and to allow myself to be reached. To stop fleeing.

Maybe I should wait and let the clouds get me. Sit with the rain and wait. Who knows, maybe something will grow.

To search, not to search. To come back home. To be.