There is a woman who begs in my neighborhood. She approached me today on Easter Sunday with her usual routine. She looks and acts like a drug addict: fidgety, spastic, dirty clothes, bad breath. She gets up in people's faces, follows them, says she needs money for tampons. If you give her money for that then it's a sandwich. If she gets that, then it's just $40 to stay at a house for the night. I give until I am comfortable, usually, it's most of the money in my wallet which may be anywhere from $2 to $20. No matter the amount, she asks for more. More more more. I understand her desire for more.
There is a writer friend who asks for help constantly. I give this person help and they ask for rewrites, some times they jokingly ask if I can write for them. They are stuck. My career advances and they cling on as if I can give them some magic potion. Other writers ask for more help: how can I get a TV job, how can I get an agent? I started up a writers' group that now has over 70 ppl because ppl ask for more time, more help. I understand their desire for more.
There is a voice in my head that asks for more time. To meditate and pray. To cut off the outside world and dissolve into silence. More more. Never enough of myself. The voice wants more of me.
More used to exhaust me. More used to exasperate me. I used to see it as this bottomless abyss that kept trying to suck me in. I got angry at 'more.' You want more? I would fold my arms and scream 'you get nothing now!' It took me a while to realize that the 'more' was love. In substitution of that, the voices/people ask for things: labor, money, time. But these things are not substantial enough so the need increases. More drugs, more sex, more money, more fame, more 'likes,' more more more. One drop of love can fill a galaxy, but a universe of stuff can't fill that tiny 'more.'
I set limits on the physical 'more.' Not to be selfish but because I realize the real thing they want is limitless love. And as long as we stay stuck on the finite thing, we will never get to the infinite. I only learned this from the pleading voices and begging hands of this world, so I guess they are there for me as a lesson.
Happy Easter.
There is a writer friend who asks for help constantly. I give this person help and they ask for rewrites, some times they jokingly ask if I can write for them. They are stuck. My career advances and they cling on as if I can give them some magic potion. Other writers ask for more help: how can I get a TV job, how can I get an agent? I started up a writers' group that now has over 70 ppl because ppl ask for more time, more help. I understand their desire for more.
There is a voice in my head that asks for more time. To meditate and pray. To cut off the outside world and dissolve into silence. More more. Never enough of myself. The voice wants more of me.
More used to exhaust me. More used to exasperate me. I used to see it as this bottomless abyss that kept trying to suck me in. I got angry at 'more.' You want more? I would fold my arms and scream 'you get nothing now!' It took me a while to realize that the 'more' was love. In substitution of that, the voices/people ask for things: labor, money, time. But these things are not substantial enough so the need increases. More drugs, more sex, more money, more fame, more 'likes,' more more more. One drop of love can fill a galaxy, but a universe of stuff can't fill that tiny 'more.'
I set limits on the physical 'more.' Not to be selfish but because I realize the real thing they want is limitless love. And as long as we stay stuck on the finite thing, we will never get to the infinite. I only learned this from the pleading voices and begging hands of this world, so I guess they are there for me as a lesson.
Happy Easter.
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