I didn’t want to, it just happened. I tried to avoid it all cost. When it happened, when it pursued me, it broke down every wall I had built. As it swiftly and gently tore open each sealed box within the confines of my flesh, I told myself these will go with me to the grave, but you refused; you demanded to accept and forgive all the shame that made me run away. It called me beautiful. It rushed over me like a sweet intoxication, quickly consuming every fiber in my being; I began to come alive. My dead petals shed one by one as the deflowering began. Once it had a hold on one petal, I became unraveled. Completely bare and vulnerable, I cried out with a “You can have it all!” At this your faith increased, certain I would never leave. Then I saw your face, ever so tender peaking from the covers, your emotions welling up in your eyes. Your body cupped mine; you examined the intricacies of my structure, from the mole on my cheek to my dimpled grin; tunnel vision, all you could see was me. My eyes drawing you in erased all cloudiness from your mind. Lips began to part forming words, dangled freely in the air, as I decided to swallow them and digest them into the pits of my body. Before fully indulging, I said a prayer for peace to overwhelm me if my feelings were as genuine as yours. It started from the tip of my head, a tingling sensation that drowned out the raging sea within. Peace. I couldn’t even stop the words from coming out if I wanted to, as the reply you hoped for was formulated. In a submersion of beautiful trinity, our spirits crying out to one another’s interwove and formed a double helix implanted in our DNA. For that moment, we were outside of time, floating in a spiritual realm of sheer bliss, when love came flooding in.

“Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”
-Lullaby, W.H. Auden

“Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! Tender is the night,” –John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

Picture your life at that last gasp of air, in the moment where you and death are about to meet face to face. This image formed in your mind, is there anything you would have changed about your life? For Christopher McCandless, rebellion and bitterness swallowed him alive. In a complete rejection of middle- class life, such as Robinson Crusoe, Christopher journeyed to find meaning and fulfillment by swapping a forced rotten materialistic consumed world for a world of adventure and oneness with nature. His journey was ultimately a journey to find where he belonged, a selfishly motivated journey to prove all those who had ever told him how to live his life, wrong. In an instant, when his pride and his intelligence failed him, when he mistook a poisonous plant for an edible plant, his one slip led to a lonely isolated death. McCandless died completely isolated, without any human interaction, whereas Robinson Crusoe was met with a human relationship; he met Friday. Did this human interaction in fact save Crusoe? We can only beg the question as Christopher McCandless comes to a conclusion at the end of his life where he actually physically writes, “Happiness is real when shared.” He humbled himself in his last moments of life when he realized and admitted he was wrong. His soul was crying out for human connection, he had attempted to be completely submerged in nature and nature overruled him. Nature runs its course, humans have the ability to change from their course of life and choose to give love. That is a quality that nature will never possess or give you. The dream of being completely alone and totally content was shattered for Christopher. Our human nature craves physical touch, craves affirmation, and craves to be loved in return. Looking at Robinson Crusoe, it is clear that his rejection and dissatisfaction of middle-class life, “My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education, and a country free-school generally goes, and design’d me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea, and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and perswasions of my mother and other friends, that there seem’d to be something fatal in that propension of Nature tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me,” (Defoe, 5) propelled him on a the same quest as Christopher McCandless.

During the first storm Crusoe faced, he promised that if he got through it he would return home. He got through it and he didn’t keep his word. Pride and a longing to find where he belonged overcame him and pressed him onward against his promise. While on the island, his intelligence and ingenuity took him far, but did he set out to do what he intended? No. His previous intentions were thwarted as he succumbed to living a completely middle-class life on the island. Christopher and Crusoe were forced to come to the end of their selves, where their pride was challenged by death. As Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall,” these characters suffered through a fall as a result of their pride. For Christopher it meant death, but for Crusoe it was near death experiences and succumbing to the very thing he rejected. What always makes me wonder is why in the last moment before death people decide to cry out to God. No matter how much pride you have, no matter how much confidence you have, no matter how much intelligence you have, death is stronger. You may have defeated obstacles in life, but the sting of death still lingers in the air. It forces you to realize there must be something more; this can’t be the end. There has to be more to life and you may even admit that you actually do need someone. If you are completely alone and dying and there is no one around, our nature cries out for companionship. In desperation for companionship and a savior near the time of death, people cry out to God. There is something innately within us that drives us to wonder at least once, that there may be something more. The fact of the matter is, that death is a truly humbling experience. If you know you are about to die, there is absolutely nothing you can do. There is a tinge of hope in you that knows there is a God who can do something; human power only goes so far. Crusoe cried out to God when he thought he was going to die on the Sea, Christopher McCandless denied God until he was about to die and declared that God had blessed him. Surveying their lives up until that point, Christopher was forced to look at where he invested his love and where his pride had thus brought him. Is it only in those last moments before death that we realize our purpose or where we should have invested our love?

Imagine. You were born with a void, this emptiness in your soul that needs to be filled up. That void directs what our whole life is about. What beliefs we seek out or what we do to fill that void? The song “Roll Away Your Stone” by Mumford and Sons speaks of the struggle to fill this innate void and find where you belong.

“‘Cause you told me that I wouldn’t find a home,

Within this fragile substance of my soul

And I have filled this void with things unreal

And all the while my character it steals,”

-Roll Away Your Stone, Mumford & Sons

That question, that emptiness in our spirit that must be filled, drives our actions and motivates us to search for ultimate fulfillment of that void. Out of the overflow of that desire to have that void filled comes our decisions, our actions and our beliefs. Will the search ever end? How can we know we have reached ultimate fulfillment, our home, or essentially where the fullness of our “self” belongs? Has anyone ever reached ultimate fulfillment and what is it? Robinson Crusoe believed that his personal void could only be filled by a life of adventure, seeing and exploring the unknown. His dream of being completely alone and content would be the solution to the devouring void within. His expectations were clearly rattled. Adventure will not satisfy, complete aloneness will not satisfy, but I do believe love will satisfy.  An unconditional sacrificial love, a love that sets you free and makes you certain of where you belong. A love in which you are loved the same yesterday, today and forty years down the road without conditions. We will search our entire lives for a love like this, a love that sets us free and shows us belonging and acceptance.  Mumford & Sons declare,

“Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design,
An alignment to cry,
At my heart you see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be”

-”Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons

We can fill our head with logic, rationalization, all the knowledge we possibly can, but it will never be fully satisfying. Because there will come a time when our intelligence fails us, when we actually make a mistake, will we be able to put on humility and admit that maybe we were wrong, that maybe we do need someone or something greater than ourselves? Maybe you don’t have it all figured out. Intelligence fades, pride fades, only love remains. Where can this love that the depths of our soul cry out for that seems impossible to encounter? Love has been tossed, abused, rejected. We must search for the beginning of love, where it all began; when we find the beginning, it will point us to the ultimate creator and fulfiller of love.  Where that love is, there we belong and there is our home.

A glance at the watch on the wrist, a peer at the clock on the wall, a check of the cell phone; a circle with numbers and two hands runs our society. We are so trained to allow time to determine our lives and live in fear of time running out. He died at 7:33 a.m. and his tombstone reads from “1943- 2011.” Will I have enough time to accomplish all I wish to accomplish before I pass away? Will I have enough time to finish this timed test? Will I ever get out of this class? Will my shift ever end? Will I wake up in time? Time is related to death and to boredom and invokes fear into our lives.

“But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

‘O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver’s brilliant bow.

- As I Walked Out One Evening, W.H. Auden

Time is fearful because it separates us from each other. Two lovers face the reality that one may go before the other. We are never ready to say goodbye. Auden refers to Time as the control that breaks all joy and crushes the spirit. As he states “Time breaks the threaded dance and the diver’s brilliant bow,” my spirit is crushed. It seems as if he is stomping on all hope and warns us that Time is laughing at us while we have our backs turned. As if “Time” gets some sick pleasure out of everything ending. Love is broken; the dance is broken, all because of “Time.” Fear and misery. It’s as if he is saying, don’t get passionate or excited about anything because it is just going to end, “Time” will rip it from your hands.

What would happen if we threw out this control of fear from our lives? You may not believe it, but I don’t use an alarm anymore. No, that is right, I tossed the need for an alarm clock out of my life. Not that I wake up naturally or have accustomed my body to wake up at the same time each day, but God told me He would wake me up. This may seem crazy to some, but lately people have come to believe it as I have proved each morning how He wakes me up at the perfect timing. This small change has been completely liberating. While every individual has their personal alarm clock set each night, and hears that sound alarm in their ear as they press the snooze one or more times, God tenderly wakes me up from my deep slumber each morning. Eventually my time on Earth will end, when my Father decides to take me, I will go. I do not dare to say I have defeated time, but rather a small victory is mine. For now, I do not have to live as a slave to “Time,” my mornings have just been intimately divine.

Waiting. We are all waiting. Waiting for our bagel and coffee, waiting till the time runs out in a class, waiting for a friend, waiting to fall in love, waiting for a career to begin, waiting for a lover to come over to say good night, waiting for a call for a job, waiting for our lives to change, to become more exciting, waiting for the next big thing. When we take out waiting from the equation, we just get being.

We are afraid of being, just being alone with ourselves because then we would have to find out the true reality about ourselves. How amazing and wonderful we think we are just may fall apart as we realize we have a deep longing to be loved, we experience loneliness, we are selfish, we have a fear of being alone or of being abandoned and rejected. I have found out recently that I really do not know my “self.” How did I come this far along and ignore my “self” all this time. Do you ever have moments when you are completely alone and something within you pours out that you had no idea was there before? Your actual “self” is coming out.

According to Social Psychology, we have as many “selves” as the number of people we interact with. A different “self” comes out with each individual. If every person was gone, and you were left completely and totally alone, do you know what “self” would come out? I believe that is our actual “self,” the one that we suppress and don’t let come out into the “real world.” I even believe that Crusoe was afraid of the “self” he would discover while on the island and so he kept himself busy with task after task. He didn’t self-reflect at all, not even in his journal entries. Completely alone on an island, and you don’t even pay attention to your “self?” We do the same in our society, whether it is helping other individuals, immersing ourselves in constant activity, surrounding ourselves by people so that we are never alone and so on. We like to wait because it distracts us from really surrendering to knowing our “self.” If we are looking for the next exciting thing to happen, we do not have to sit and give in to visually walking through each pain and rejection we have suffered and every fear we have stored away, every dream we put on the shelf that we thought this is not reality. I have decided to embark on a journey of getting to know my “self.” Not a journey such as Crusoe’s where I am all alone and cut everyone out of my life, I know I need others to encourage me and edify me during this time, but I truly want to get to know my “self;” the deepest most inner longings and cries of my soul. Where I was hurt as a child and where I shoved pieces of my “self” away from the world and where they only come out when I am completely alone. I am ready for those inward cries, hopes, and dreams that I thought were too innocent for the world to come be a part of me.