Unsettled and Changing

People wish to be settled.

It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life

which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

 

Tell me, 

what is it you plan to do

with your one wild, precious life? 

Mary Oliver

We are born to fulfill a role in this world and then, hopefully, leave the world better than it was before we took our few precious breaths and then departed. Sometimes, we are thrust into these roles; sometimes, we fail to listen to our heart; and, sometimes, we flow with the river around us because it demands so little. 

But the day comes when, as Mary Oliver writes in "The Journey": 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

 As for me, I am looking for the stars...  What about you?