Attraversiamo

I couldn't compare this year to a kiss from a rose because I've never been kissed, particularly not so sensually or invigoratingly. A year ago nearly, I started this blog, this space of expression, ushered by an idea from a friend, one who walks by me. I wanted to write, so this, finally, was that opportunity to put something out there and have it reflected back and not disappear into the nether of the rubbish bin. About anything, about something, about nothingness itself, I wrote, experimentally, experientially, discovering that writing was a means of communication and connection, of courage and unity and the exploration of emotion, thought. It's a canvas, on which I can either paint an infantile abstract piece, or be blessed with something closer to art that's a window into my soul. So I can see it. So you can see it. And from the statistics that Blogger collects regarding my blog, it's not been a very widely-accessed experience, which I accept. Thus I can say that this space resembles more a spring in solitude than a photographed fountain in the centre of Rome, with statues in dynamic positions and coins carpeting the bottom. Looking for love, looking for the eternal, looking for happiness, that is what I had in mind, and each post, then, was my coin, my wish, my prayer, this being the 125th.

I began the year without much knowledge of where I was going, except to university, which was to be dreaded and revered, and therefore not very helpful as a goal seeing as it could be anything I made it out to be. Life was in my hands after high school, though I was to realise later that it was not perched warmly in my palms but coursing through the veins in my fingers, and like the blood there, it wasn't in my control. I wanted to know more about myself, so I went on and began a journey of self-discovery. Fears, shame, guilt, stress, all emotions that I had felt before, would come at my door and I was supposed to open it for them. I had some new unwelcome guests too, such as jealousy, desperation, insanity, heartbreak. I'd seen them in movies before and in the lives of those around me, but oh, I did not expect them to come caroling at my doorstep, and yet life did guide them there. Hesitantly, I let them in, then at various times kicked them out, then after pacing back and forth in the hallway, I opened the door again, and they walked back in, temptation hand in hand with itself, so pleased to see me, and later to lure me with its sex. Beyond being host to this cauldron of negativity, I had been blessed with signposts everywhere I looked, telling me what I needed to do to entertain the guests or to be a better host. Friendships formed, friendships strengthened, friendships stilled and weathered the teacup storm that started when clouds gathered.

I started university in March. Stressed, I experienced a sense of loneliness that I had thought had been buried back in Year 9. It was a bitter, alcoholic aloneness: addictive because it placed upon me thoughts I did not want to think but which I ultimately scooped up again from the sands of time and built a crumbling mound I'd pretend was a castle. Suddenly, the world had opened up for me, and I did not see myself in it. The tempest had begun, trying to find my shelter before it was too late. But I wasn't quite getting to that place of safety anytime soon. I don't think I was meant to get to that ideal place at all, and every pocket of sunshine I could find, I basked in half-heartedly, aware the rain would come back in again and I'd get wet. I changed my clothes, my approach, several times, but that wasn't going to stop the weather. So, instead of racing away from the eye, I was instead guided towards it. The centre. Where the demons lay together and fornicated. I received "A Course In Miracles" in the mail. I thought to do the course, it wouldn't hurt to find some answers that the introduction promised. It specifically said I didn't need to believe each day's lesson, just follow it. With that guarantee, I went for it. Spiritual awakening beckoned.

I don't remember what I thought it would be, but this was not it. The course emphasised completion, devotion, courage, presence, gratitude, all which have taken turns to teach me this year about life, about what I had missed, about what I have held in my past like an idol to commit suicide over. But it was not just about learning, it was also about experience. Suffering was tearing me apart below the surface, and habitually, I would try to understand the shit out of it and then it would make some fleeting sense and I'd be happy, until it stopped making sense. What I learned was that I could not, could not, could not, understand it all. And if I couldn't solve my problems, then, woah, there would be pain, content to suck on my life like it came out of my teat to nourish this cute, pudgy, infested, destructive baby. My mentality took a serious beating, and I had to question everything, what people meant to me, what I meant to myself, what I was doing, whether I was hurting people, whether I was who I thought I was. The perfect list of ingredients for overthinking, and that's exactly where it lead me. Thought. So much of it. So much of it unnecessary, because it was unable to answer those questions with certainty.

Certainty, then, came from elsewhere. The course lead me to God, or the universe, or Life, or whatever else you want to call what you cannot call anything. I was to have faith in Him, as I had consciously never had faith in anyone or anything before. Here was my life, on a platter that I'd chewed the silver from in my overthinking. Here it was, for God's taking. I have to surrender it completely, for the decision to have a transformative effect. I have let go of many things, but there still are some that I yet hold on to, still fears, lies, things I am ashamed of, things that burden my heaven and make me confuse it with hell. I am confident that I will let go of all of those, simply because I am willing. When and how, I don't know, but I do still have until sometime in early April 2011, when I am scheduled to complete the course. Past that, je ne sais pas encore. There are still lessons to be learned. Yet this is an appropriate time to reflect, as I have learned enough to witness a change. I don't know how old I am, mentally. I don't know whether I am gay, or straight, or bi, or a, or b, or c. I feel a sense of resentment towards being packed into a labelled cardboard box to be looked upon and segregated into some portion of interpretation. I feel it's detrimental to discovering reality. I don't know what specifically I am supposed to do. But I know that all the answers I need to know, will be given when they are needed, and it is in that promise that I trust. I can't rush everything, nor can I slow it down or numb myself from feeling pain so I can feel just joy. They are mutually exclusive by definition, but underlying them, there can either be unconsciousness, or the peace of consciousness, not both, always one. It comes down to the decision, whether I want the truth, or whether I want deception. Where I feel safe and secure is the criteria on which I base that choice.

The thought philosophy has dominated this period of time since the birth of this blog. I am trying to figure life out. While I watched others go on with their lives, content, taking part in joys and games and at times, their own soul-seeking, I removed myself from the stream of mindlessness that had driven me before so that I could prepare well for an adult life of doing what I was supposed to do. Quite frankly, it comes down to what I want in life, and I knew there had to be more than just chasing pleasure in a game, or a girl, or porn, though I do recognise they have their roles to play. With this realisation, I wanted the truth, I wanted what lay underneath the forms and things that we as people would involve ourselves in as if we were dolls in a house full of props. From situations, I wanted to go beyond to reason, to the mechanics of depth and creativity. I expected an intricate but clear machine; I found nothingness exemplified. Because, really, soul-searching had lead me to a skeleton of myself - dead in form, or at least, dying, ephemeral, but in essence, well, untouched by anything, invulnerable. Perhaps there is a better metaphor for that. I have touched that depth and its beauty is like a well of openness and disregard for difference. And it's really when I let go of thinking that that place is reached. The moment of experience is over and then I open my eyes from meditation and look on the world differently, as if it were all okay, even if there was fighting and politics and advertising and gore and poverty and apathy. For a brief glimpse, I do not even register the suffering, as if it was gone, and it mattered not. Then I slowly scooped it back in, because I thought I had to, as if it were my responsibility as a human being to take on the pain of others when I had some respite. I copy-pasted instead of select-deleted. Then I released back the tide, and that was the back-and-forth experience of finding peace, because it went to and fro. I want to say peace is winning, but the truth is peace isn't fighting, so that would be a moot statement.

I have been blessed this year, despite the war of worlds and words in my mind. Perhaps when one agrees to find themselves and agrees to confront their past with no weapons, just forgiveness, one is greeted with help from previously thought-of-as-unlikely places. Each situation has been and is a lesson. Each person is a brother. And underneath my strict mold of the world, that mental construct I foolishly wore as a protective helmet, I am a brother, too. In that spirit of oneness in which everything real is, I am. This lesson, I found difficult to digest, especially when there were those around me who were very different outwardly, who had different goals, approaches, behaviors. More often than I would like to admit, but I do here anyway, my ego has played the part of a victim, ever the attacked, ever the one who is hurt. Other times, my ego was the conqueror, dealing blows to other egos. Yet behind these masks, I am to learn that we are all the same. This is a glorious truth, but one I know not if I can impart but merely point to, one I yet bring to the world because I still believe there are exceptions to, even though there are not. I have talked with friends, at times nearing a point of desperation, and in those moments of vulnerability was revealed the river of love I had been searching for elsewhere, in the wrong places. In case you wonder, I talked about behavior, personalities, hopes, fears, pain, suffering, guilt. Identity too. Things I would normally stray away from but was needing answers to. And friends were happy to steer my vessel in the right direction, whether they were aware of it or not. That's another interesting thing that's happened this year, I've gone under the radar and achieved so much personal growth, without many people noticing. Help, signposts, have come from close friends to strangers to strange situations to music and literature. I figure if I am willing to give myself to life so that it can use me for whatever it wills, then it would point and guide me in the right direction, and if I deviate from the path, it would come and show me the way back after a pep talk and a realisation or two. But I don't want to create a tornado or some other dramatic turn of events. I want to quietly find peace and then radiate it through my impersona so that those surround me may find their own lives more pleasant and enlightening, wherever they are on their own journeys.

Ultimately, I want to be loved, but I also want to give love, as I have before. Giving and receiving is the same thing. In the spirit of unconditional love, I would learn that love knows no boundaries, no definitions, no traffic lights nor walls. I expected at the beginning, foolishly, for someone to tell me that they loved me unconditionally, and then I would impart all my pachyderm belongings onto their ass and I would be a free mule alongside them. Bull. Yes, others can love you if you don't love yourself, but you cannot know it unless you love yourself in some way, at least a tiny bit, somehow, tucked away beneath layers of difficulty. This year has taught me that I can tell you nothing about love as you may want to hear it. I have never been with anyone intimately, so I cannot give any stories of romance or consuming bodily passion. Yet what I know of love, is that if it really is love, that is, if it is without reserve, then all it is is a recognition of yourself. You are love. And so am I. I am writing these words but language cannot encompass such completion, wholeness. From memory, I don't think I've felt it wholeheartedly. But I want to. And it will come when it will come, but I know it will come now.

Love is everything, and there's nothing else. Love is the word that I use, but I use it loosely. I like love. It sort of symbolises peace and contentment and fulfillment and joy all in one. Perhaps it's not very focused in my mind, but I don't hold on to it. I find myself saying 'true love' now instead of love because of all the changes to the term, not that adding 'true' makes it more true, it's just easier for me to know what I mean. Like I said though, I can't tell you anything about it, though I've written quite a bit on it. Perhaps it's me pointing to it, for me, for you. Perhaps it's my romantic mind, or my secretive desire to express emotion in a world that doesn't value it to the extent that I see it, especially coming from someone of my gender.

I am grateful for so many things, so many people, some that know themselves, some that may not yet. I appreciate you, for sharing your life with me by reading this. Everything really, even the 'bad' stuff, for it came up and showed me where I needed to change. The puzzle pieces fit perfectly, even if it all looked like a mess on the floor when I began. Now it's beginning to look like what it was meant to look like, life. I feel like I am right where I need to be, and I have faith in the gentle light of guidance that I am going where I need to go, home.

Attraversiamo.

Readjusting The Focus

Today I realised I didn't really know how people and life worked. I thought I did, with my expertise and experiences under my belt. But I don't actually. I have made the present into a very complex image based on the past and it didn't turn out as simple and easy to interpret as I thought it would be. So I got some advice from some good friends, about living life and breathing. They told me to take it easy, to chill out, to not think everything means something. We give meaning to things, I should know that, and now I recognise it because I see that this is what I have been doing. I am the one that places value on Facebook, on clothing, on imagery, on things said and unsaid. I am the one that allows doubts to be placed in my mind about the most trivial of things. I decide what's in and what's not. The basis that I have been making these sorts of decisions on is experience. Things I learned in high school don't apply as rigidly to life in general. For example, friendship in high school taught me that friends were around all the time and the ones that you stuck with in the cluster/clique were the ones you would leave with and that would be happiness. The world is not high school. There is a much much wider variety of forms and people out here, and that certainly adds a touch of flavour to this great moment we call life. I have learned that I have put my faith in the images I have of people instead of the people themselves. Mistake made, lesson learned. People are more than just what you see, and the surface isn't just a cloud of irrelevance. Faces, particularly eyes, lips, cheeks and teeth, are used to make connections. I've gone for the quick version of getting to know some people, straight to where I thought was the heart but was instead just a piece of paper with a heart drawn on it. People have to let you in. And I admit, there is a sense of urgency that makes my own search for people seem desperate. I recognise that and am willing to change my gears and my approach.

In the back of my mind, there used to be a voice that was saying how I was manipulating everyone, that I was a controlling bitch, because I was able to make friends by building them up instead of breaking them down. That voice never got loud until this year when making friends suddenly became obligatory and more unconsciously feared and now I thought there had to be a process involved. That was a mistake, listening to the voice. Manipulation comes from a lack of security, a fear that people acting autonomously would mean my demise. Now I know that not to be true - manipulation causes people to stop understanding you and forces them to interact with a projected image of yourself, of someone better, of someone you think they need. And this is how it complicates things, because then the friends you are trying to make no longer comprehend how your world functions. Mine didn't. I was torn between manipulation/seeking attention and authenticity, an imbalance which is poisonous to relationships because it injects confusion and blurriness, and what we see then is not what we get and the complexity suddenly becomes very foreign.

Life is simple. I see now that I looked at people and discerned what their problems are and somehow made that part of who they were in my mind, thereby somehow giving me a way into their hearts if I could repair the damage. But this is a misperception. If you only see the problems in people, you stop seeing people and see problems instead. And how can you befriend problems? People carry problems with them, but as a person who understands that they carry them, I realise that what they carry is simply their past, which is no longer here, so they are in reality carrying nothing.

The aforementioned friends made me realise this because they were looking at me as a person, as a friend, not as somebody with a perception problem. And I awoke. I was making them into what they were not. The removal of my filter made me see that I had made a big error. I was seeing broken people, but people are not broken.

So I thank you for the lesson :)

I think the following reiterates it well. It came to me in the library while I was taking a break from studying for exams.

"I want you to know that in each of us there is a light, a light so bright that it penetrates through our grievances, our guilt and our mistakes. It radiates from within our soul, so this light keeps us always warm, always at home in its peace. And whenever we are lost, it is only because we stop seeing it when we close our eyes. But it never ceases to shine, and neither do we, for we are that light."

Victim Of Circumstance

Just like a dream, life is not what it seems. What happens when you go to high school in your first trimester, and you know no one and are finding it difficult to make friends because the others label you based on how you behave? What happens if one of those early days you feel belittled, emotionally crushed because who you hoped you would be did not turn out to be the reality that others saw when they looked at you? What about if on that same day, you feel deprived and lonely, on the brink of tears as you walk across a busy intersection, facing the world with an ephemeral visage, when a car speeds from the road ahead and smashes into another car only a few metres away from your little body? How stricken do you feel when you hear the sound of metal clashing, of glass shattering and scattering, of a baby suddenly bursting out crying? How do you feel when for the first few seconds after the shocking accident, your tongue numbs and your expression whitens as you look at the wreckage? And then what of the baby who wants reassurance that he or she is alive? What happens when you walk away, because the weight of the day's prison sentence leaves you unable to help because you think you might do more harm than good? Would you say life sucks? Jokingly, I might have, but I never came to the conclusion that, I would learn four years later, Veronica Mars came to when commenting on Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man". Her words, "Life's a bitch until you die," spoken like a philosophy to be adopted and lived by as a sort of life motto, a proof that there is a reason for the madness that life sucks, because it sucks. This pseudo-logic did not occur to me in such a formulated and cynical format, not only because I did not know what cynical meant, but because I still had expectations of how my life would turn out. After all, I purposely chose to go to a good public high school, mine being a 'college', despite the large distance that I had to cover with a bus each day. I ventured it was worth more to go to a place where it appeared that academics were valued highly, because that's where I would fit. I was brainy, smart, intelligent, a brainbox. I knew answers to questions in class, not because I went home everyday and did homework and extra study for five hours - I don't think I've ever done that. My tool, which others mistook for my secret, was my ear. I listened, because in class I was brought up with the idea that you were meant to listen, absorb information. So I did. Others, probably brought up in different types of cages and regimes, zoned in and out. Because my prowess allowed me to excel, even in the reputable academic environment of my high school, I had a goal to strive for, to be the top. I had come to school to learn, so that's just what I did.

But academics was certainly not the biggest lesson I would learn. My parents stressed that it was imperative for me to do well, meaning academically, and me being a good little boy did as they said, though not directly because they said it. Their influence on my values went past academics, but performance at an academic level was a strong core of those imprints. I soon found out, however, that academics was not of the highest priority to other students, which made it difficult for me to bond with others. I was timid, I didn't really know how to get along with people. Awkwardness was an idea that was previously alien to me but somehow entered my consciousness and vocabulary, and sort of then became an excuse to try relate to other people, sometimes by lying about myself. The magnifying glass I can now place on my high school experience shows me that I didn't know how to make friends and my unwillingness to go out of my boundaries slightly halted the development of my social skills beforehand. When it was time to attend my 20-minute-away by bus school, it was clear that the social world is something I would become a member of, warts and all.

My English teacher in my first year, Year 9, came to me one lunchtime. I was sitting down on the wooden steps, alone with my sandwich, looking at the library, not knowing if I really was allowed to go in there and scared to ask for fear of rejection. I may have been on those steps because once the bell would ring, probably more than twenty minutes away, I would be ready to enter class, the door being just a metre behind me. I sat and gnawed and chewed and swallowed. She came to me, maybe she sat down next to me. Already having answered questions in her class, in her and the pupils' eyes, I was 'good at English', so she knew I had my academics sorted out. If my memory persists, she asked me how I was doing. Don't remember what I replied. She then may have asked me about friends, and I said I didn't have any. She introduced me to the actual concept, then, that high school was half-academics, half-social. There was an element in this experience I never consciously concentrated on. I never had to until then, because I always found somebody to bond with, at least superficially, to fulfill my friendship 'needs'. In high school, the rules of the game had changed, because the other students weren't willing to give me a chance. Judgment had set in - you make your friends by finding common things between each other. As a shy boy, I never got to the stage of sharing what I liked. Assumptions were made that I studied a lot, so I was a nerd, a geek, whatever. No one knew me, no one cared to know me, nobody knew themselves. Some of this realisation came to me at that time. I behaved a certain way around my classmates, and like a missile shield they were in defensive mode because they felt I fired at them by not bending to a status quo. I acted different to them, I got different marks, I talked differently. So people treated me differently - what else could I expect? This made me an outcast and within the first few days of this discovery, I went home and I cried. Simple: I hated myself and I wanted to change to be accepted because back then, I was nobody. I wanted people to like me. I wanted to be known, to have friends, to laugh out loud and to do the things the other kids were doing. I wanted to belong, so I had to change. I thought all I then had to do was change my behavior, an experiment which failed within the end of that first year at high school. I didn't know how to act like someone else. I didn't know how to add new imprints into my behavior, even though subconsciously I was doing it all the time. Unwilling to make that conscious decision, I had surrendered partly to the idea that I could not change. But it was more like a step of procrastination, because I felt that if I knew how to change, then I could change. So the process of figuring out the how was the aim I had set myself, though not in those words.

My arrival from intermediate into the much bigger pond of fish that was high school made me more aware of my behavior. Hints were dropped during childhood, by my cousin, by friends, by my mother and father, at times even by the mirror. But the bombs came in 2005, when the people around me were old enough to use labels that actually dealt my self-esteem some serious damage. They were not wise enough to understand what they were really doing, but they were able to use them so they could achieve their unconscious goal of separation. I acted differently. That didn't make me less of a person, but I was sure made to feel that way. I remember once I was in science, and the weapon that everyone used on me hadn't been used for some time - which gave me an opportunity to recharge myself. It thus came to be quite a memorable blow when I was again labeled that way when we were making phones out of tin cans and string. I was paired with some guy that was quieter than the norm. He spoke into the tin, and his words traveled through our white string into my tin can. At the time I was smiling, having fun, child fun. He asked me a question and through that stealthily dropped his bomb. I quickly replied with a negative answer, but the shock waves of the blast went through me. My 'no' was almost a tremor. I felt ashamed for the rest of the day, my innocence gone.

It's true that people are allowed to ask questions, but I did not recognise that at the time. To me, it was painful to be asked questions about who you are that were marginalising. It was not 'who are you?', but 'are you...' and they didn't know any better. Neither did I.

But I came through. At one point I wanted to be a victim, I wanted to be pitied. I thought it might gain me favour, morale, but nothing like that can make you whole. High school, especially at the beginning, was hard. It's hard to be told by people around you that you aren't enough. It's hard when you believe them. It's hard when you think illusions are real, and when they do too. But suffering is a great teacher. One way, or another, life is the greatest teacher. It will teach you exactly what you need, in the best way possible. You are allowed to object, to resist, but you only would if you were scared, if you believed that there was another way. This method creates friction, pain, and its discomfort then becomes your teaching method for the lesson that life tried to teach you in the first place. One way, or another, life teaches you what you need to know. How can I possibly say then, that life sucks? I can't say it and speak the truth. Veronica Mars had her own circumstances which she had to deal with, and in her pain and confusion, she made her conclusion. "Life's a bitch until you die." She believed it, and in her representative power as a human being, it came to be her filter through which she saw her experience. You may believe it too, which is why life hurts you and you feel victimised. After all, so long as life is a bitch, the bitch has to live up to her name. You'll still learn, but in an unpleasant way, until you discover that there is a much more effective and authentic path you can take. As students, the best thing to do is learn. Then we teach. It is with hope then, that I recommend learning truth before attempting to teach it, because once truth is learned, life will teach it through you, for the benefit of all.

Ephemeral

Ce soir, je me suis rendu compte d'une chose.
Days go by, and I seem to have a desire to enjoy most.
Mais, je m'attends aux jours que je sais que je ne les aimerai pas.
And such a cycle goes on and on and on and on.
Jusqu'à je le remarque.
I wonder if it is my thinking that causes such fluctuation.
On serait d'accord avec moi.
There are thoughts which work their way around my consciousness.
Elles viennent de mon passé.
But is it really my own past?
Je ne vois que les choses qui n'existent plus.
The possibility of this seems to be rather null.
Cependant, je peux la reconnaître comme un paradoxe.
I see all things around me and know them to only be imprints upon my mind.
J'ai appris.
For usage in need.
J'ai essayé d'oublier.
But it is not the way.
Je dois désapprendre.
And I must make the journey back.

The light at the end of the tunnel is most certainly not an oncoming train, lest I somehow believe it is. No, the light is a reminder. Of what I am, of who I am. My journey through the tunnel is ephemeral, for soon I am to realise that I am here, light, and that the tunnel was merely an illusion, never having been there.

The Paradox of None

Whereabouts would
Would wishes be
Wishes be
Without someone to grant them
When we need



Nothing.
There is no need.
Because none of us are imperfect. No one is so.

We are one. And this means that my being who I am is the same as you. I'm you. Your face is not mine just as much as it is not thine. You are whole, and you know this, because I do, and I am whole. And knowledge is universal - true - and therefore it is shared.

And I have nothing to say for it. I live joyfully. Joy, fully. What do you feel?

I am nothing
I am no one
Yet we are one
I am one
I am all

And it is thus that I express, so that I can become aware, so that I can learn that I cannot learn for there is nothing that I do not know. But I have become lost, and only now do I see the path that I am walking on, illuminated by the light of God.

Among people
I am none.
I am one.

Steps, Discovery

University... I start Monday. Orientation this week has been a challenge. Power overwhelming. Except the space, that is the cheat code for invulnerability in Starcraft. It is free, yes, because it is up to me to organise my schedule and plan my time. It is up to me. There is guidance and support, but on a level that assumes my autonomy. Maybe it expects it. My education, what I make out of the lectures, tutorial and laboratories, is on my shoulders. I came to university to learn.

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence."

Abigail Adams' words lie below the picture of the snowy mountains on my calendar. Words of inspiration.

This month, that is the proverb that I have explored. University seemed a clear opportunity for me to attain this learning. I have been excited prior to orientation, and after the initial information overload that the experience offered, I have had time to accept what it is. So while there is plenty of reading to do, plenty of absorbing of information, plenty of questions to be asked and answers to be discovered, I realise this is happening. I am learning. High school was a stepping stone to this next part of the journey. My hand was held as I walked up the path, and now I have left go of the hand and taking the steps myself. And the hand still guides me, this time pointing ahead. I am grateful. I am getting an education, I have this opportunity to be shown new things about the world, to learn histories and les histoires. Am I ready? Yes. I've been gaining skills, broadening my horizon, readying myself to enter into the world of academia, where people aim to explore the world and discover, at least that is the aim. Not everyone goes to university for this reason. For me, I go, because I want to explore, to grow mentally and discover more about this world I live in. I want friendships to burgeon, love to be. I can hone my writing abilities, but not because they are not perfect at the moment, but because there are techniques and ideas that can sharpen my skills. I have this opportunity here, to discover. I can let it pass me by, but I do not. It is here, and I appreciate it. I am learning.

So while I now walk, one small step in front of the other, towards the true, I know that if I fall, I shall get back up again and continue. I do not need to fear falling, for I am guided and I am whole. My journey is known, it is sacred, and I am not alone in its creation. And I walk.