There is something we all want.
There is something we are all looking for:
A piece of bread, a quiet room, a pair of jeans made just for us.
Fingers intertwined, an old song, soft touches in the night.
These things come. And these things go.
And now we’re looking again, wanting, wanting…
We don’t have the words for how much…this wanting.
Our hands are not the hands of a child anymore.
They have become someone else’s hands.
Our thoughts are not the thoughts we thought in our youth.
They have come down to us filtered by a thousand other minds.
Our feelings, so many feelings. They were never ours to begin with.
They move in a new direction every second that passes, like jellyfish.
We have changed over and over again, and yet…
And yet there is something in us that has not.
We pass by a mirror and catch a glimpse of our face.
And we stop and stare into our own eyes.
(Is it still rude to stare if you’re staring at yourself,
Looking for all the places God might’ve left his fingerprints?)
Who is it that is looking out through your beautiful eyes?
It’s that same one that looks out with baby eyes from the crib…
From kid’s eyes from the school bus…
From grown eyes from the coffeeshop window.
That one doesn’t come. That one doesn’t go.
That one doesn’t become anything else.
That one always is.
So much stability. So much quiet confidence.
Like it was the truth or something.
Could it be that what you’re looking for, you already are?
Could it be that what you’re wanting, you already have?
Instead of looking out and searching anxiously,
Could you rest in the one who says “I am”?
As you grew and grew and outgrew yourself—
From child to kid to teenager to adult to elder—
This “I am” has given you your sameness over the years.
Even in your dreams, even in the most delirious of your delusions,
It’s the part of you you can’t shake off.
This is the being that you are.
This is the being that you’ve always been.
This is the being that you will always be.
Welcome to the end of searching and the beginning of finding.
Welcome to the end of looking and the beginning of seeing.
Your restless breathless wanting has brought you here.
It kept you dissatisfied with everything that you are not
So that you might keep reaching for what you really are.
Blessed are you and the One who made you.
Blessed is your wanting and the One who put it in you.
—Rahim