In the night, I woke up with an insight that's been percolating but finally became clear. This whole pickle (and I refuse to use the word crisis!) is not about getting a roof over my head, and soon. This whole pickle is about love. OK, perhaps this is what I've been on about for weeks, but seriously, I cannot move forward one inch if there is not at least a tiny iota of human love in the picture. My passions have generally been about music, art, spirituality, and place. Sometimes that love has been reciprocated, sometimes not. A "place" cannot love you quite the way a human can, and the same goes for works of art, or the experience of writing, or singing music. In this lifetime, maybe it was safer for me to stay at arm's length from human emotion because of how love hurt me early on. I've started to experience love in many of my living situations, for which I'm so thankful. But what's ahead of me at this moment looks completely like a wasteland -- in fact, completely unbearable -- unless I can find a situation where there is a small amount of mutuality and sharing. I may be becoming more of a contemplative mystic, but I do need people in my orbit who care, and who I care about being with. I need cleaning up dishes together and Scrabble games and raking leaves together and just knowing someone's next door or under the same roof. Looking forward, I just can't yet see active options with these qualities, which is scary, but perhaps I haven't quite known how to ask, or look.
Our culture takes things so literally. Recently, there have been lots of articles about how cities are desperate for new housing. ("The housing shortage.") The solution is, of course: building new apartments. When people are hungry, good folks try to find the way to provide meals. When people have too little income, services may be in place to help them earn more money. When people are sick, the medical profession tries to cure or heal. And none of these is wrong exactly, except that unless the solutions come from a place of love, I just wonder if they can ever work. An apartment is an apartment, but can it actively love you back?
It may not be fair to others that I am moving forward with a huge need for love. Yet I cannot be the only older person facing this issue, realizing that they have never really genuinely loved or been loved. I dearly hope that sometime in this lifetime, I experience what it is like to have someone look me straight in the eyes and say, "I love you, Liz, completely, unconditionally, no matter how rocky this earthly journey has been. You are perfect as you are and you deserve to be here." And you know what? I'll bet that every homeless, hungry, sick, addicted, unsuccessful person in this country needs those words more than any other solution. Especially at this moment, it is all about love.
