How Long Before

So how long is it before we find the things we have been seeking? How long before the search is over and we discover those things that we know we have been lacking for so long?

All our lives we have felt incomplete, as though there is something missing from us, some phantom limb, some secret knowledge, some quiet understanding of the nature of this world and how our lives shape themselves to fit it, that we feel we have always lacked.

Others we see, on the street and throughout the world, they seem to know something that we don’t, have some understanding that we lack, have some other invisible limb that has a much firmer grasp on this world than we feel we have ever managed. Our grip is so light, tentative, a strong breeze could blow us off this world forever, never being able to reach out again to hold on, watching the world recede into the distance through our tear-filled eyes.

We never – it seems – learnt the easy language of the others who can make sense of this world to themselves and talk easily of it to everyone they meet, as though this universe holds no mysteries for them. It is as though they understand the intricacies of how matter, energy and time bend themselves into this creation, to build everything out of a single instance of less than nothing.