Just Like Me

Just like me, your heart is beating. Just like me, you have felt joy and sorrow. Just like me, you are interested in self inquiry and have the privilege, the time, and space, to do just that. We also have a responsibility to that opportunity.

I was driving down Lombard Avenue, a four-lane road that follows the train tracks. I had just finished my morning ritual and routine and was now driving from my neighborhood to the yoga studio. It was a crisp and cutting, brilliantly sunlit morning. In the gravel between the road and the tracks, was a red faced, scrappy haired man standing shirtless, with arms outstretched, chest pushed out towards the sun, screaming, crying, raging, roaring. He had a layer of dust over his face with tear stained lines streaked down from his squinting eyes to his scruffy chin. He was yelling at that sun in the sky. 

It took less than a second for my mind to attempt making sense of it by naming: Crazy — homeless — drunk — addict… and it was still within that less than a second for my mind to drop into my heart and my heart swell and break open and cry, (yes, my heart cries.)  

Then I remembered my morning practice in front of my altar, candles lit, a statue of Quan Yin embodying compassion, me on the floor crying and flailing, praying to I-don’t-know-what to take my struggles, my loneliness, my frustration with not getting what I want away. Please remove my difficulties.

Just like me, but in the privacy of my own home, he and I

both wanted help and an answer from the powers of the Universe, from the Sun, from God. 

Just like me, we both want a meaningful life. We want to understand, we seek meaning because when we find it, we find peace. I hope he has found it.