When I was seventeen

Buddha on my bedside table

When I was seventeen or so, I felt despair most of the time. I didn't have a name for it. I didn't know it's cause. I had no context to enclose it. It just lived with me.

I sought out writers and poets, artists and music that reflected my inner world. And so, I found beauty and truths that are with me still.

I discovered, almost by chance, that doing things was better than not doing things, even though despair came along too, and did the things with me.

I discovered that sometimes, despair could be a catalyst to make me act, and that despair and activity, despair and the doing of things in this world, could co-exist quite happily.

And now, all these years later, I wonder if there's also space for an un -doing. A time to face that old despair straight in the face. To sit and look at it head on. To find out what it asks of me. To find out what else it might offer.