‘The human comedy doesn’t attract me enough. I am not entirely of this world….I am from elsewhere. And it is worth finding this elsewhere beyond the walls. But where is it?’
The pull of elsewhere has dominated my life. As a child, lying tucked up cosy and warm in bed, listening to the wind beyond our walls tearing the world apart, I used to luxuriate in the contrast between in here and out there – and wonder where the Power came from to cause the winds to rage, and the sea to beat endlessly against the coastline of my native island.
It would take me a long time beyond childhood to understand and accept that my obsession with the big “Why?”, from the moment I opened my eyes to the world, is not the norm for most of humanity. Sensibly, they just want a quiet uncomplicated life.
Apart from my maternal grandfather, a loving and very broad-minded Christian – ‘remember, child: whatever our race, colour or creed we are all God’s children’ – nobody knew what went on in my head and heart throughout my entire childhood.
There is no such thing as one biography of a life.
Your perspective changes with the passage of time and the way life’s inevitable challenges are dealt with. You rewrite your own history in your head all the time, mostly without realising it. For example, I never understood the full extent of elsewhere’s pull until my mid-life descent into and return from the Underworld, a period which lasted seven years – undoubtedly the most difficult and the richest time of my whole life. I feel in better relation now to that mysterious elsewhere than I have ever been !
To me, elsewhere is the vast wave of which everything – universe, cosmos, galaxies, planets, Earth, all life forms – is a droplet. We arise from elsewhere, and that is where we return. Call it the quantum vacuum, the Zero Point Field, God, Buddha, Krishna, the Ground of our being, the Source, the One: the name we give it does not matter.
I have also learned that elsewhere is not somewhere else. It is here, present, now, everywhere – always.
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(headline quote is from Eugene Ionesco:quoted in Philip Yancey’s “Reaching for the Invisible God” p25)
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400 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2012
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Yes,…this is my favorite line: I have also learned that elsewhere is not somewhere else. It is here, present, now, everywhere – always. So true. Thanks for sharing…and letting us in on your pondering.
Thanks Kris! Good to feel kinship in spirit with you. And there’s plenty more pondering where that came from! Hope to drop by yours tomorrow.
Looking forward to more pondering…smile
What a profound and inspiring point of view. I haven’t thought of it as ‘elsewhere’ before but I know what you mean. There is an almost preternatural sense of otherness to it, a vastness, a sense of something more. It’s where we’ve come from, where we’ll go at the end and where we are now. I love this!
So much appreciated, Selma. Trying to capture a sense of that Realm beyond words, with words, is an elusive pursuit indeed! I am so glad to have caught a glimpse in such a way that it touches you.
“A quiet, uncomplicated life…” A lot of my not-so-quiet, embarrassingly complicated life that’s been just what I longed for! But would almost certainly have been bored.
Good post, Anne!
Thanks, Nan! Like you, I have at times longed for ‘quiet and uncomplicated’. Like you, it didn’t happen. Like you, I’d have got bored if it had…….