Roam

You're looking for the Place.

Not a special place, or an important place. The right place for yourself. A place that means nothing to anyone else, but that completely fills the nooks and crannies of your being and lets you hold on to the world as firmly as is possible for a human being. A place that is like it was made for you, like a rock of the perfect size and shape to be held snugly in your hand. But it's not just the shape of this place that matters to you. It's the way light enters it, the way it is positioned and attached to the other places around it, the way it absorbs or reflects the sound of your footsteps.

Where do you start looking for such a place? No maps bear marks for it, no road signs show you the direction you ought to take. Even if you were lucky enough to encounter someone who has seen your Place, they wouldn't know that. To them, it would be an anonymous, insignificant spot far away from the Place they are looking for. No one can lead you there. Indeed, it may be moving at all times, depending on the tides of oceans and peoples, on the movements of your dear ones and on the evolution of nature's forms.

Over the years, if you travel and go around a good deal, you may come upon many a place that calls to you, invites you personally into its premises, captures your gaze a few moments longer than would be normal. The narrow staircase-street in a quiet medieval town; a grassy spot between a boulder and two trees along a mountain trail; the uncertain band of terrain where sand turns to grass on the beach of an uninhabited island. For an instant after you see such a place, you wonder if you've finally come upon the one Place that you've been looking for all these years. You briefly survey its curves and textures, the resonances of its colors and sounds. You breathe its air into your lungs to feel it inside you. Some of these places are close enough to your own Place that it wouldn't be unwise of you to stop there and make them a lasting part of your life. Yours wouldn't be a bad life if you could come back to such places over and over when you feel the need to elevate your spirit above the clouds and into the rest of the Universe. But somewhere inside you know, after those instants of contemplation, that it's not the Place you seek. It is a good place, one to be cherished even, but it is not where you will fit in your entirety. If you were to interrupt your search there, you would be giving up on something precious. So you divert your gaze, reluctantly turn away, and continue walking up the mountain path, towards the other side of the island where everyone is waiting for you, or to wherever else you were going a minute before. Your search goes on.

Few people actually manage to find their Place. Of those, even fewer are able to seize it and make it their home. Those that do, exist in a shroud of bliss. You don't hear from them, because they don't need to talk about it. The rest of us, many at least, keep looking far and wide, or near and close. In doing so, we live. We are already creating a Place or many places for others to find, or for our future selves. We talk about the search, and share it with others. And while we may not fit into the Universe as snugly as our Place would afford us, many of us can be happy anyway, because we know that by not stopping we are ever getting closer. ●