Finding Intimacy

My biggest wish these days is that I could take my own advice. The future is not so bleak and and undefined as it once was, only the certainty that life will end someday is much more palpable. I no longer fear that I have no place in this world. I just fear that I will leave nothing behind. A textbook case for Erik Erikson on Generativity/Stagnation, I would surmise. Though maybe I should look into Intimacy/Isolation.

I am somewhat resigned that it is not my fate to rise to rapturous heights of romance - I hate to be a real party pooper, but such rapture is often an illusion or fleeting moments at best. It's not that I fear intimacy - but the pathways in my life, the things I have chosen to do, have kept me from being intimate with just that ONE PERSON with whom I can share the rest of my life. It's funny that it isn't as hard as it seems, but I have a suspicion my simple open-hearted ways lead some to suspect I have murky hidden agenda. WYSIWYG, and perhaps a surprise or two, with my package.

Twenty years ago I had lofty dreams to be a difference-maker. What I didn't know at that time was what it would cost to be that kind of person. I think it was Voltaire who said that the sum of the human condition will be largely unchanged even by historic events - there will always be the poor and deprived, and misery will be the lot of many people regardless of what we do to change that. I'd like to believe differently, but I can only do so much. Maybe I won't even be a footnote to history, but I'd like my life to have been instrumental in making others' lives happier.

It's tough when no one is there to listen. It's tough without someone who will lean upon me, whom I will hold around my arms and keep safe through the tough times, someone whose acceptance will make me more courageous in facing each day.

Until then, I live each day and give as much as I can, and even when my heart is shredded by the vicissitudes of life, so it must be. I won't make deals with my Maker, but I surely hope this will be enough for Him.