Where are the seekers?

When I was five years old, my dad got ALS. Fucking disease. I still remember I was that age when I went to visit him with my mother after not seeing him for some days, when he was hospitalized in the neurology center. From that day on—although I would see him decay little by little for thirteen years, until he finally succumbed—I never saw him complain once. Not about pain, discomfort, fear, or any intrusive thought that anyone experiencing such changes and impairment in the body would feel.

If trying with all your fucking soul not to traumatize your child out of despair or anguish for the disease you’re facing, yet still trying to give her some stability, remain unfazed and strong, and dedicate as much quality time to her as you can, is not love—then I don’t know what love is.

So... yes, I still struggle with his pain to this day, and I find it horribly unfair that the most remarkable person in my life had to go through that. But there is one thing it gave us: time. He was aware he was going to go sooner than we both would have liked, but being conscious enough of that—and not being able to work—he gave me a lot of quality time.

He showed me the greatest classical musicians and taught me to recognize them. He showed me how to play chess when I was five and spent entire afternoons playing music with me, talking about deep thoughts, and discussing books he had asked me to read beforehand.

So... yeah, probably at six, spending an afternoon playing chess with your father, recognizing the violins from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, or talking about the meaning of tarot cards wasn’t exactly common—but it was what I had, and what I treasure more than all the gold in the world. It’s also probably what gave me the parts of myself I still like.

During one of those long, intricate afternoons of magic and wisdom, he must have noticed I wasn’t common—my constant urge to seek something I couldn’t find, and of course, not fitting in. I must have been around thirteen when he gave me a book that brought me some solace and peace: The Benevolent Devil.

Although the idea is far more intricate than what I’m writing, it basically talks about two kinds of people—an idea I still carry to this day. Although we might all be human, breathe, eat, feel, and so on, there are two big differences.

There are those who follow the current—religion, social conventions, school, work, kids, family, living to work, maybe buying a house, and so on—that I call the basic ones. And there are others, who, just as Kerouac said, are the mad ones:

> “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

I call them The Seekers.

I’ve always felt fascinated by the Seekers. They don’t give you small talk; they can turn a walk around the block into an adventure. They don’t talk about TV, and although they’re like sponges absorbing all they can, they are at the same time never really content—because they’re aware of how much more there is to live and experience.

So, although we know we can make others dream and swim with us in the same starry, colorful night waters, we also might fall endless times, not finding whatever we’re supposed to find—becoming victims of the basics, who, though not evil, definitely don’t get us.

Why would taking a boat and ending up on a deserted island be remotely better than having a 9-to-5 job? Why could that damn poet give me a slightly better life than the owner of a company? Why could playing with a dog all afternoon be better than buying new shoes? How could staying home alone be more fulfilling than getting drunk with “friends”? And obviously... why couldn’t I try to fit in a little more? At least a little?

The thing is, all the times I did try to fit in—and somehow managed—it gave me an enormous sense of emptiness, as if I were a prisoner inside a void... another screw helping to hold the nothingness together.

So, as I grew up and accepted that my path was not to resign but to seek—and that this path would bring me both more pain and more happiness, more fear and more fulfillment than the basic one—and as I understood I couldn’t run away from who I was, the road became lonelier, more winding, darker, sadder.

I realized that many faces appearing in my life had done so only to confuse me, hurt me, distract me, and pull me away from my truth, as dark as it could be. Everyone seemed so immersed in themselves that they could hardly see beyond their own noses. They live so fast, victims of their own needs and desires, too busy to care—to see that the world and the universe are so much more than paying bills or owning a car.

If an atom’s nucleus were the size of a football, the next one would be ten miles away. And even though there are protons and neutrons, almost everything between one nucleus and another is empty space. So, despite of us humans being composed of almost nothing, and though the nuclei never touch each other, we still feel touch, warmth, cold, fear, love, tenderness... We never really touch anyone else, yet sometimes we feel someone so close to us that we sense a palpitating connection. Where does that come from?

The atoms inside our bodies were created at the same time as the Big Bang. It took millions of years for them to find each other, surpassing every single mathematical possibility to form our bodies—and yet, we live and we carry millions of years of cosmic knowledge within ourselves.

We hold in us atoms as ancient as those binding the oldest stars together—atoms that, like them, belong to the same ever-expanding universe.

What if we’re seeing it all wrong, and the universe is just one huge living being we don’t understand yet? If the very idea of beings capable of thinking, feeling, and creating as humans do is beyond any possible chart of coincidence—then why do humans try so hard not to think? Not to connect? Not to vibrate?

As above, so below—so why can’t we see that we’re all part of some energy that moves every level of consciousness, and that the greatest mystery might be inside ourselves?

Why do the basics try so hard to silence the Seekers? And why do the Seekers give up?

> “The gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved. Why so few? (...) So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that’s this: Which is the most universal human characteristic—fear or laziness?” (Louis Mackey)

Fear or laziness? Fear or laziness?

I’ve just come to realize in these last days that my soul is as lonesome as it can be, because even though many might “understand” what I write, no one is going to do anything about it. Most are stopped by fear or laziness even before even starting to try to connect... to resonate...

So... where are the Seekers? Where are the Seekers like me? Where are the mad ones? Why can’t they dance anymore? Why can’t they jump to swim into the deep moonlit waters with me? Why am I falling because of them? And why do the demons laugh when I do?