A Big Enough Heart

I used to think I could write my own story beginning to end, forge my own path. But the older I get, the more I realize that ghosts of the past haunt my days and nights, silently guiding me this way and that. Some ghosts are of people I knew. The beauty and pain I’ve seen in them lives inside of me. My steps are forever different because of their impact on me.

Others I never had the chance to meet. Still, these ghosts imprinted themselves on the template of my life. My father lived his life haunted by the shadow of a father he never knew at all, not even in stories. And now, I imagine that shadow has made a home in me. My father’s feeling of never quite knowing all of himself, never quite feeling whole has stitched its way inside my soul.

The past is still alive all around us. And so, I search, looking for the missing piece, as though there’s something out there to be found that would make me whole, solve the mysteries that keep me up at night. Something that would fix the burden my father carried, would be a cure for the burdens we all carry.

And yet, deep inside, I know this is not true. There is no magic formula that can cure these things. Being human is complicated and messy. There is sorrow and joy, love and loss, beauty and ugliness. And I long for my heart to grow large enough to contain it all.