What will they see?
Something that started out as a prayer more than a year ago, when I asked myself, "What will they see?"
August 23, 2004
12:20 AM
I am unsure what others would see if they pieced together my life from the things I’ve left behind. Will they see a good person, a person who strove hard, who worked hard, who loved with a passion?
Or will they see someone who trusted well, but whose doubts loomed large underneath? Or someone who loved much, but whose fears crippled much as well? Someone who has surpassed a great deal, but who constantly feels he hasn’t surpassed himself? Someone who threw himself at life with wild abandon, but who shirks and hides when he can, when the noise explodes and oppresses? Someone who can be a great philantrophist, but only because he started living life with selfish desires that was exceeded by generosity only much, much later?
Someone who loves much and is hopeful that the size of his fears are smaller than the size of his love. Someone who laughs much because his tears are likewise many, whose desires are great only to surpass his great indifference.
When they see this life I have lived, the bits and pieces of it I have strewn in many, many directions, will they see how I have struggled to live an extraordinary life in the face of what I feel to be my own ordinariness? Or will they see that I have only tried to survive, and live this life well, and sought only to understand why I’m here and where I wish to go?
Will they see someone who gets distracted by the mundane, or someone whose eyes and heart are set on the divine, seeking to better this hand he was dealt with? Or will they see someone whose heart was always discouraged, whose shoulders always sagging with the weight of his burdens, whose spirit was time and time again dragged down into the muck of his own self-criticism?
Will they see his failures and admire his capacity to rise up again, or will they see the heart bruised and battered, crying out in anguish, desiring with all its will no longer to keep up the fight?
Will they see that heart that loved well, or will they see the heart that cried much, hurt much, was spurned much, and felt much pain?
Will they see someone who gained wisdom and spent his life knowing much, or will they see the mind that forgot much, most of all many many important lessons whose meanings could have spared him much, much pain? Will they see in him the sagacity of the old, or the recklessness and the wicked pain of the young?
I am now here, faced with my life, and I feel the need to gather my strength and once more plow the fertile yet seemingly unyielding land ahead of me. I feel the need to understand my reasons, to understand them really well, and to never forget them.
I feel the need to gather my mind with my spirit and my body, and fortify them with strength and discipline. I feel the need to go back to the simplicity of my desires, to the desire of my heart: I want to become a doctor.
