Wonder

Most days you wonder.

It happens in different intervals and at separate times. Sometime between your second cup of coffee and your morning commute. Between every email marked as read, your inbox cleared, and your drive to the gym. Sometime after dinner. After the sun hides behind the other side of the globe. After you pull back the sheets. Before you close your eyes. Between the beginning and the ending, and beginning to begin again.

You wonder.

You wonder what it might be like to answer the call of the void. To step off the edge of the world. To empty your pockets. To leave behind the race of sculpted horses impaled upon a spinning machine. To lock all your doors and throw away all your keys. Between the long defeat and the hope of something different. Between giving up and gaining something new. You wonder.

You wonder what it might be like to be a monk. To say "fuck it" and find a monastery or a hermitage. To be the kind of monk who says "fuck it". A foul-mouthed, holy figure. The insight and spiritual weight that comes from wearing a cowl and a robe. All the enlightenment of a needle driving an inky grace into skin. Between Saturday night and Sunday morning. Between the altar and last-call. Between faithlessness and the pew. You wonder.

You don't hate the idea. It wouldn't even require much of a change. You're antisocial. You're a single-parent. Your student-debt is equal to the value of a private island off the coast of Brazil. You know all about poverty, chastity, obedience, and solitude. Your failures of being an adult. Of being a person. Would be transformed into saint-like virtues. It's not that you're a financial train-wreck anymore, you could tell yourself. It's not that your afraid of intimacy. Don't be absurd. You're a monastic now. You're simply keeping your vows. And so you wonder.

It's true most monasteries don't offer child care, but you could convince them to make an exception. Call it early admission. The kids would fit right in. Or, maybe they'd burn it to the ground. It all depends on whether there's an on-site exorcist, but still, you can't help but wonder.

You wonder what it might be like to live a life of quiet contemplation. Of reading, of writing, of letters, of words. Without the necessity of success or money. Without the need of accomplishments, accolades, or rewards. Between the thirst and the quenching. Between the water and the flame. Between letting-go and reaching. Between acceptance and control. You wonder.

You wonder what it must have been like for Thomas Merton. You read through the journal entries of the Trappist monk's early years. He was sure of his decision to become a monastic. On that he never waivered, but he found no shortage of other worries and uncertainties. He complained about his inner noise and the constant busyness he succumbed to.

The abbot wanted him to write "a lot of books" and he resigned himself to the task. Merton would have preferred the work of manual labor. To be walking among the trees, to be in prayer, but he was obedient. He did what he was told.

He learned to appreciate the silence that writing afforded him. But even then he didn't care about the book after he finished writing the last line of the last page. It was "nothing special" he said. The results were none of his concern. You wonder about the tension. The life of contradiction. You wonder if this was the "belly of a paradox" he said he found himself "traveling toward [his] destiny in".

Between commitment and detachment. Between vocation and apathy. You wonder.

You wonder if this is "The Central Paradox" that Elizabeth Gilbert says you must be comfortable in inhabiting. Your art, your work, your purpose, your reason for being here. Must matter more than anything else. And, at the same time, "must not matter at all".

You start to wonder if you need a monastery. If you need to get away. It's not your life you need to escape from, it's your ambition. The relentless drive to care too much about the payoff. About the outcome. About everything. Your problem has always been a matter of misappropriating the fucks you give. A failure of fuck-management. An unreconciled balance sheet of fucks allocated improperly.

Between too many and too few. Between giving them all to what you love and none to the results, none to what happens afterwards. You wonder.

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