Beloveds, why is sadness so important to you? Why is mourning for the past so important to your heart? You feel great sadness for all the friends and family you miss and for all the events and occasions that you miss. And then you also have your fond regrets for the opportunities you missed out on. Sometimes you are hard to please and so easily made sad about anything at all.
How dear is the past to you one way or another, whether fulfilled or unfulfilled, whether taken note of at the time or not even thought of until now, so much later. Where did high points in your life disappear to, and, of course, you also wonder what is the point of all you would bring back or rewrite if only you could.
Sometimes you would go on bended knee to apologize if only you could. You might stand up in school, for instance, and say to the teacher and the class:
"You didn't know me. You didn't know me at all. Nor did I know you. Nor did I know myself. I was stunned and dazed most of my life, as if in a kind of trance. I made an appearance, yet I wasn't really present. Whether I enjoyed or did not enjoy, I was hardly present. I went through motions of being there. I did not know how to act so I rolled myself up in some kind of posture, and I wasn't really there.
"I was waiting for something, some kind of rescue, and rescue came and went, yet I don't know what that amounted to either. Certainly, I depended upon the outside to bolster me, and, yet, this outside that is not dependable is still of the utmost importance to me. I know I would be different now if I could go back. And yet all the fallacies I had about life, others, and myself, tar and feather my heart now. I cannot leave well enough alone.
"I didn't know you either. One teacher or another gave me peace or more, and yet I did not appreciate those forgotten ones either. In a way, it was all the same to me. Maybe life was all a blur then, yet recollection comes in bits and pieces now, a little ragtail memory, I would say.
"I did not know what was to become of me, and I don't know now what has become of me. In one sense, I am no further along than I ever was. In another sense, I never was, and I am not sure now that I actually exist. I pretend I'm here. I read the clock. I open the refrigerator, and yet I do not know really who goes through these motions.
"And yet what I would give to be in this classroom now with all of you for even five minutes. I think I would embrace you, my faceless teacher, and all the students whose names I no longer remember. You, this one, and you, that one.
"I do not think that life was a great experience for me or that I even experienced it. I think I was sitting on a hill somewhere and imagined that something was going on. I was so far away from everything. I haven't quite gotten there yet.
"In a way I feel like a hobo. I ride on a train, and it doesn’t matter where it came from or where it's going. I am occluded from myself.
"I don't even know what I am saying or what I mean to say or what I mean by what I do say. I do seem to know that I'm riding the rails, and I can't get off. At the same time, I am well aware that I am derailed.
"Where am I from, and where am I going? Where am I going and where do I think I'm going?
"Where have you been, Classroom Teacher? Classmates, did we ever know each other? We occupied seats in a room, and I guess that was the extent of our acquaintance. What was all that about and what was it not about?"
Yet, Beloved Sons and Daughters, it was something. It was not nothing. Even as you don't know the meaning of it or if there was or is a meaning, sitting in that classroom has rubbed off on you and contributed to you, somehow, somewhere. You don't have to know, and you do not have to relive it or aspire to it or deny it.
Where are you going today?