The Amalgamation of Being

I long for beauty. Somewhere in the deepest reaches of my amalgamated right and left brain is the truth of who I am. Out of this place oozes romance and the emotional, almost unspeakable parts of life. I am tormented by the parts of me that don’t follow after passion. The parts that choose logic, practicality and reason. Logic, practicality and reason may have their place but they defy the essence of who I know humans were made to be.

Ever more I find myself at war with the left-side of my brain and the right side of my body. I want to live from weakness rather than dominance. The dominant side of my brain that rules through cold calculation and methodology; the right side of my body that relies on my right hand to accomplish nearly every daily task. This reality frustrates me endlessly. So much so that I have begun intentionally using my left hand to do things I’ve never used it for in all of my life. It’s my silent rebellion against dominance; against the way I’ve been taught to live.

Why am I like this? Because I desperately want to feel. I want to feel everything life shares with me. I want to use the fullness of what I’ve been given to experience all that life is. I live to question everything that I’ve ever been taught because I want to know who I am far more than who I am supposed to be.

I long to sit lakeside with a small camp fire and an empty canvas. I long to feel the brush strokes of acrylic slide across a painting whose beauty will please no one but me. I long to be entirely unburdened, free to dream and create and envision. I long to know the utter satisfaction of a life lived so expertly that kindred spirits seek me out to know my secrets; to establish an expertise in beauty, in peace, in melting. The melting of ones soul into the place that experientially understands the psalmist who said, “deep cries out to deep at the noise of Your waterfalls.”

Every time I stumble onto someone who has chosen to forsake worldly goods and status to be in the quiet solitude of a life well lived for no one but themselves, their Creator and their closest loved ones my eyes swell with tears. “They get it”, my right brain ponders to itself. And then almost as easily my left brain rises up to justify the need for the wheel cogs pushing society forward through science and industry, technology and business, government and policy and my doing nature jumps on its horse to pull me forward where only some of me wants to go.

How can you know so deeply what actually calls to you, yet consistently refuse to give in? What is that fear that keeps so much of mankind running on the wheel rather than wandering through the forest? Is it the fear of appearing endlessly selfish? Or is a generation living so completely at peace with themselves not the most selfless act offered to the world?

I guess I can’t concern myself with the world if I cannot even win this fight within myself.

But beauty. Yes, there is beauty in everything, even practicality. But the beauty that brings a thick, soothing calm to my soul is wild and unnecessary. It is extravagant and whimsical and indelibly hidden behind all the reasons why it’s simply not allowed. It radiates somewhere from that secret place within me that my Friend and I are working to release. Perhaps one day soon I will give myself full permission to yield to beauty; to the life I long to live. One day…

Join me?

-Rachel

“Once you understand who she is, you start to love her.”