The
Quest
“I have
been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have
been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have
been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned
so much from journeys I did not want to take...”
Suzy
Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
Some of us are natural
born “questers.” I have friends who travel everywhere just to see
what's there. They don't mind being awkwardly out of their depth, not
speaking the language, eating unidentifiable foods, or sleeping in
communal beds. I admire their freedom and adaptability. I study them
as I would an unknown species, trying to figure out why they are like
that and I am not. Some of us quest in other ways.
Lev Grossman, in The
Magician King, wrote, “You didn't get the quest you wanted,
you got the one you could do.” My personal quest is to study
human behavior; to map our interior landscape, to study our
geography. I find people endlessly fascinating in the same way that
others find climbing Mt. Everest fascinating. This is not how I
imagined I would be, not how I imagined I would spend my life. But,
here I am, and this is it. I wonder about you—are you on a quest?
Are there questions you
would like to know the answers to? Are you content to just search
Google, or do you want to go there and see for yourself? Are there
other places in the world where you feel more at home than where you
are right now? If you were offered an opportunity to go to the moon,
would you take it? Or, is your quest, like mine an interior one? Do
you plumb the depths of your own thoughts and feelings; do you ask
other people questions that probe theirs? Is your quest so important
to you that you're willing to intrude into other's innermost
thoughts, to spread things apart and scrutinize their composition? A
quest is a quest—the motivations are the same—to learn something
new.
I hope you are on a
quest; that you have a curious mind that wants to know more about the
world and all beings. If you were going to name your quest, what
would it be? Is it the same one you imagined for yourself as a child?
Do you still dream impossible dreams? I hope so, because that is a
sign of a living spirit, of a wealth of life energy—libido. It will
feed your soul for all of your days.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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