Journaling Month ~ Week 2 ~ Understand

~Here's an explanation of Journaling Month and Week 1~

Monday -
I think we're all a little like the sky.  On the surface, from the world, we're vast, yet polluted being, the harshness of man staining us until our splendor has been covered by foul-smelling smog.  The lights of great cities, squabbling for grandeur, drown out all our stars.
But above the world, the veil, are worlds and nebulae, great fiery expanses of nothing, unknowable reaches of darkness and light.  There are things none of us will ever understand.  There is birth, and death, and great galaxies colliding.
You can see the whole wondrous creation of a soul, sometimes.  In that moment when you meet someone's gaze and you feel an overwhelming sense of connection.  The tiniest peak at infinite thoughts, like stars, and emotions like nebulae and Love is the Universe that binds us all together.
So think of people, the next time you gaze up at the sky.  Think of yourself.
You carry the breath of God inside you.

Tuesday - 
As stressful and socially uncomfortable as it can be, I love crowded Subway cars.  Because you get to observe people, to study them and to wonder.  Wonder where they have come from, where they are going, what they are thinking and if they are happy.
You can almost see life trailing off people, a whole backstory hidden behind eyelids and lips that will never be revealed.  It illuminates them like a silhouette, there yet unreadable.
I love that.  And I love tying together the pieces I observe of people.  The woman all dressed in purple - clutching a floral handbag like its about to melt -  with lonely, downcast eyes.  Did someone buy that bag for her, picking it out after collecting careful knowledge about her tastes?  Or did she buy it for herself in a fit of loneliness?  Or was it a present from some aloof, cynical step-parent?
There are stories there.  Whole existences coming together.
And I have added mine to the pot.  My eyes saw and reflected upon that handbag and now are a part of its metaphysical history.
And I wonder how people view me.  The stories I collect, like old trinkets on my skin.
The stories we all collect.

Wednesday -
           i am incompatible with myself
           everything i am
           it wars
           the truth, the lie, the denial, the hope
           all is me, separate and unified
           and i have looked at the world
           fearful like a drum
           and i have made music
           not with rhythm
           with words
           but they play themselves out to the beat of my heart
           and everyone stops to listen 

Thursday -
Families, whether made by blood or experience or friendship, are so terribly beautiful.  Because they collect memories, like an old box of photos - they are the manifestation of history, circumstance and personality.  They never truly lose their battles, because even in defeat the things of the past come to construct the future.
I am so grateful for the wonderful web of family.  They understand, even if they do not comprehend.
And that is a true blessing.

Friday - 
I dread being fully understood by another human being.  Just as I am an introvert socially, needing time and spaces for my own, so I am with my personality.  I keep vast storehouses of myself for no one to see, a place untouched by another soul.  It is there, yet it is not, I know it utterly and yet it escapes me.
I keep little pieces of my existence to be handed out only to a few.  Some I place in the hands of good friends with simple words, some inside strangers with complex smiles.
I love the secret spaces between myself and my Creator, somewhere only we know.
It is a retreat even from myself.

Saturday - 
The past.
It fills an old book.  It is what you leave behind.  It is what you understand.  
It begins with big, spaced out letters about daily childish troubles - the attempt to climb endless carpeted steps, the food spilled on the floor.  And then its middle swings in to darker things - of world, of lost, of lives like cracked pavement and gentle hands almost touching, almost holding.  Afraid of momentous things.  We do not know the ending.
You are living the ending of the past.  It smells of things you cannot identity - you will understand one day.  We will understand so much.  We already do.
We understand the ground beneath our feet, the lives that reflect us like two-way mirrors.  We understand the gentle hands almost touching, and why they never touch.
We understand Love.
It fills our pasts, the past, the old books with no ending yet.
But we understand the ending, too.


Week 2 - Understand
We're told there is a lot we don't understand.  For the most part I think that's a lie.
I have explored a lot in my 16 years of life, and I will continue to do so for the rest of my days here on earth, and possibly even beyond that.  I have explored a lot this week.  We come across things daily that puzzle us, be it emotions or people or the universe itself.  And often we dismiss it all as unknowable, aloof, and too complex for our little brains.  We honestly believe there are questions without answers -- or at least, that is what we tell ourselves.
But I do not really think that is true.  We have been given minds that can understand everything it needs to (and, paradoxically, it can even understand the things that it does not comprehend).  Yet sometimes it is easier to believe that we do not understand, but doing that is even more frightening than the truth can be.   
Delve deep inside you.  I guarantee you will find meaning and understanding there, in your soul.  Explore yourself, and you'll know where to look.  Explore God, and you'll have already found it.
Don't sell your brain short.  Deep down, we know things, deep-seated mysteries and answers like chasms.  Look for these everywhere.  In you, in others, in the sky and in the pavement.
But I also think we know not to lean on our own understanding, as the verse goes.  The whole concept is a jumble of paradoxes, but so is life, and we can grasp it.
We can understand.

I hope you all had a great week and I shall see you next Sunday with yet more of my numerous thoughts.  These posts are a bit long so I might break them in to two segments next time.  We'll see.  Have a great week!

^(OvO)^