Cheeku,
As the cacophony of fun and frolic slowly dies down and the new year takes firm roots in the cold wintry days with fog draped sun and the nights shrouded in the mystery of bone chilling cold, I look back and take stock of what was and what could have been…isn’t this the bane of mortal life on earth? To rejoice at what has been but regret for what could have been but didn’t?
Your absence, your presence…is all at once so palpable. After all your laughter reverberates in all the sounds of laughter of your brother and your friends…your twinkling eyes shine through every little prank they play. The world is defined by the boundaries of joyfulness that you expand all the time.
But in silence you speak to me. Sometimes through music, sometimes through poetry and sometimes through prose. There is a sense of belonging in that moment which is so difficult to describe…
Long ago I had read Dag Hammarskjöld’s ‘Markings’. Written in the form of a diary, it is so full of inner reflections. This morning as I sat listening to you, suddenly I came across these passages. Were you telling me something?
“It is not we who seek the Way,
But the Way which seeks us.
That is why you are faithful to it,
Even while you stand waiting,
So long as you are prepared,
And act the moment you are
Confronted by its demands.”
It seemed so true. And I wait while you have already risen to the call of the Way. When shall the Way call me? When shall it unfold before me what my true destiny is? Will I be able to fulfil my great desire to be a traveller, an eternal traveller like you…travel through this world and then travel out of it into the vastness of the universe and its innumerable galaxies?
Then came the words…
“I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings
Of expectation.
Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds
A clear pure note
In the silence.”
I know you are already there where life resounds a clear pure note in the silence. Shall I ever get there?
Cheeku, a very happy new year and bon voyage for your renewed travels through the worlds that await you…
Love
Dad