By Cindy Myska, therapist

I am hungry. Hungry for a sense of belonging, hungry for a sense of knowledge, for more guidance in this dance of life. Whereas yesterday I was growing up, reaching for an important place, that of adulthood, today I am there. No longer able to focus on an ideal of where I am supposed to be heading, I stand here, looking for something, feeling hungry, my soul shortchanged by the ineptitudes of life.

Were it only yesterday, I could look forward to growing up and having freedom. Were it only yesterday I could look forward to a poetic marriage and a challenging career. Were it only yesterday, I could look forward to something ... anything.

Now, though, caught up in the sands of time, I feel hungry, unsatisfied by all that I thought would satisfy. Washed ashore with a broken spirit, I wonder, did I just do it all wrong? Did I make so many mistakes that the promise of my youth was mishandled, misappropriated and unsung? It must have been me, it must have been my fault, I should have done something differently, this is what I think. This thought, that I made so many wrong turns, so many mistakes eats away at me, for I know yesterday will never come again.

Then, something inside me pauses me to consider that maybe the guilt is not mine. Maybe instead, I learned incorrectly as a child. Maybe the promise of adulthood as freedom was far overvalued, maybe poetic marriages were just pretenses by the adults I knew. Maybe, just maybe, I had set an unworthy goal, one that was wrapped up in a false pretense that I had uncovered too late.

Too late? Yes, too late to not be hungry, and yet just in time to feed my soul. Just in time to erase the traces of hunger, filling my belly, the soul of my being with a willingness to let yesterday go. Yesterday I could live with my eyes toward the future, thus feeding my hunger with images of the future. Today the future is here and I must face the hunger.

Oh, but what joy, to face the hunger, to be present in the present! What a mockery I have made of myself to believe that images of the future would satisfy me. What a gift I hand to myself when I take up the spirit of today and feed from it. Like a long lost sailor am I, joyfully, ravenously taking in the sweet and sour of today’s bounteous feast.

Image:  Some rights reserved by rgourley