Science tells us that the cosmos is ever expanding ... that it is a virtual infinite space waiting to be both discovered and explored. I find that this pretty much sums up the human spirit as well. There seems to be no end to how far we can travel within ourselves. With every breath we take, with every day we live and with every new experience we have, our souls expand. We are all on the journey of the human spirit.
There is as much mystery inside us as there is outside ... and maybe more. We've spent almost a trillion dollars in search of what is out there and yet it seems that most of us won't even give the time of day to discover what is going on inside us. If we were to carefully observe people from the inside out, we would find both black holes and luminaries. And if we choose to walk with someone for a lifetime, we will find that no matter how well we may know him or her, there remains much that we have still yet to discover.
I have been married to Janna for almost 29 years now and I can attest that she is an ever-expanding universe. The more I get to know her, the deeper I realize that she has become. I will never know her completely because she's essentially a moving target and not a stagnant one. We cannot completely know someone who is always growing, always changing, always expanding. That is what I most love about Janna ... she is not the same woman I married almost 29 years ago. She has become far more than that.
I wish I could say this was true for everyone, but sadly, I am not so sure that it is. Some people seem to live in very small universes. Their worlds have room only for themselves. While their souls have the potential to be ever expanding, they instead seem to be at the center of a collapsing universe ... no room for dreams, for hope, for laughter, for love, for others ... room really only for themselves. They find themselves very much alone, and they are very lonely. Strangely enough, most of them do not even know why. Their souls crave also. And the way that they have "gained the whole world and lost their souls" is that they have made themselves into their whole world. They have sold out.
Most of us do not actually sell our souls to the devil; we just give them away. We can choose to play it safe, to hide behind indifference, to choose the path of mediocrity. The truth is that we can swallow just about anything. But the question is, can we keep it down? We live in a world filled with indifference, apathy, detachment, conformity, compliance and acquiescing to the status quo. We may swallow, but it doesn't settle well. The human spirit has no appetite for the bland, the mundane, or even the passionless. When we stop believing that we are each something unique, something begins to die within us.
What exactly is it within the human spirit that insists on its uniqueness??? It is not enough for us to simply exist. That each of us has a unique fingerprint, a unique DNA sequence, means more to us than simply improvement in forensic science. We are nothing less than driven to find our own paths, to make our own way, to be our own persons. While we may love to have things in common with others, we desperately need to believe that we are in some way unique. We want to be both the same as and different from those around us. We want to have things in common, but we don't want to be common.
We are made up of nothing but ordinary material ... primarily carbon and water. Yet something inside us cries out that there is more to us than meets the eye. We are like a cloth made of both burlap and cashmere. We are without question on our way to becoming dust. Our souls cry out, "Is this all it means to be human, or is there more?"
Even as I write this and perhaps as you read this, there is a voice coming not from our heads but from our gut, screaming that we are more than just water, carbon and calcium. So much of our life journeys can be explained by the cravings of our souls. Our souls know their uniqueness. And a voice from somewhere deep inside us longs for us to discover it. It calls us out and beckons us to pursue it.
There is something out there to be found, and our souls are restless to find it ....
To be continued ...
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