I want more. I need more. I find that I am now brave enough to admit it. ~J.V. Manning I feel it in deep within my belly, an unsettled, slightly anxious and mildly intoxicating - feeling of restlessness. Not an; I’m-bored-and-should-do-something restlessness, it's deeper than that. My soul is restless. My being is restless. I find myself staring off to the horizon and feeling a magnetic pull on the soles of my feet. Pulling me to not just leave the realms of my comfort zone but to destroy every last piece of it as I go. Yet, I stand here - fixed in place. A yearning is smoldering inside my soul and every time I feel that pull - the embers ignite even more. There have been moments when the fire within roared so furiously I felt as if I would crawl out of my own skin. It's exhausting. Fighting the pull of my soul. Fighting the restlessness that keeps building and building within me. Anger rising more quickly to the surface, directed to no one and everyone at the same time. Frustration. I know it's not the world's fault that I'm standing here at the threshold of "next" - for there is no one to blame but myself. I am hesitant and with each moment of hesitation - the yearning grows stronger. Volatile. I worry it will consume me. That I will do something reckless, out of character. Like giving into the feeling and see where it takes me. Leaving everything behind. But, I know I won't. I can't. I have responsibilities. I have commitments. I have to be something to everyone in my world. I have roles to fulfill and meals to prepare. I have paychecks to earn and bills to pay. I have an everyday kinda life and its chains have me firmly in place. I love my place in this world, yes - but still, my soul yearns and the restlessness in the very core of my being - grows stronger. Often, I find myself standing outside on my porch, shrouded in the darkness of night, gazing towards the heavens and losing myself amongst the stars. I fling my deepest hopes and dreams into the universe and hope that one of the constellations will fling them back, one by one, and show me the way to have it all. I've thought, over time, the restlessness would fade. It's only grown stronger. The older I get, the more settled into myself I become, the more it builds. There is more to this life, more I should be doing, experiencing and accomplishing. But, as I sit here in my little corner of the woods in Maine - I can only travel in my mind. Day to day minutia weighs like concrete on my feet. I want more. I need more. I find that I am now brave enough to admit it. I don't care about material possessions. I don't care about owning this or that. I want to love hard and live harder than I ever have before. I want to taste this world and experience people and places I have only dreamed about. I want rambling conversations with strangers on trains and talks with the moon while sitting on the rocky coast in Oregon. I want to dive deeper into parts of me and see what we can create together. I want to be best friends with myself and reach for things I never thought attainable before. I want to see what I can accomplish, whose lives I can touch and I want the chance to take every life lesson I have ever learned and put them all to use. I want to sit in a coffee shops in New York City and watch the people go by. I want to write long winded pieces and beautiful books from a cabin deep in the Rockies. I dream of visiting Reservations to listen to the wisdom of the Elders. I want to travel to far flung countries and sit among the locals so that I may absorb everything that makes them unique into my soul. My eyes beg to see the northern lights and my ears long to hear the Blues floating out from the smoky bars in the French Quarter. I want to wander around castle ruins in Ireland. My soul yearns to sit in silent meditation with Tibetan Buddhist Monks so I may become more in tune with my spiritual center and carry forth into the world with pure love and grace. I want to write words that flow from my soul onto the page. Words that change people. Words that make them think. Words that challenge them to see the world around them with an open heart and mind. I want to dance with my muses on the shores of Australia and then sequester myself somewhere on the Maltese Islands, where I can gaze out to Mediterranean Sea as more soul expressions flow forth. I have fought like hell to get to this point in my life. The point where I finally have opened my soul to the possibility of more. I've paid my dues. I've earned my scars and I've healed. I have allowed the fortunes of fate to mire me places that were never of my choosing because of duty, because of honor, because it was the right thing to do. I have cared for others, put my life on hold for far too long. I've allowed my passion to fade away, my desires to fossilize and my dreams to become dusty. I find I can’t fight it any longer. It's out of my control. They are demanding their time. Demanding their space in my consciousness and they won't be denied any longer. I have Restless Soul Syndrome and it excites and scares the hell out of me at the same time. A duality of emotions that threatens to overwhelm me. The winds of change are blowing, gusting and I must hear the siren call of my soul. I can almost hear the sighs escape the lips of those of you reading this right now. You feel it as well. That yearning, the hope there is more to life than just the 9 to 5. Doesn’t make us ungrateful for the life we have. Doesn’t mean we love anyone any less. It means we want off the couch. It just means we want more. It makes us dreamers, adventurers and it makes us ones who refuse to settle. We need experiences, we need more unprecedented moments in our lives. To fuel us. To make us dig into parts of ourselves we never knew existed until the restlessness in our souls could be denied no longer. We are all so much more capable than we give ourselves credit for. I close my eyes and imagine this majestic mountain range with each of us standing on our own peak, raising our arms to the heavens and shouting… “Ready or not world – here I come!”
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