Where The Wild Things Are

Where are the answers, I asked, I feel like I know what to do but still I don't know where to start.

Seek where it's at, answered Wisdom, repeatedly.

I could not remember where I stopped seeking. Ramadan it is, the goldmine of redemption, of chances, of rediscovery of your faith. But I have yet to find willingness or good faith. I found new beginnings and eventually, relapses. I went back to where I was, convinced more than ever that I was not meant for a life of piety.

I'm tired, I have no strength. I have not been tried, yet I am already faltering.

That's because your source of strength is not God.

God made it too difficult for me, so I rejected the pursuit. Now it abandoned me.

Blasphemy!

So I went into my own universe and shut the outside world out. At some point I became terrified of leaving it. I dread every recollection of my disappointments there. I get consumed with guilt but it wasn't enough to make me brave it out and find my way outside again.

Of all things, a writing about a mischievious kid in a wolf suit, denied of his supper - sailed, in a private boat with his name on it, from the retreat of his room, to an imaginary island where the wild things are.

And suddenly, it all made sense. Life, in its essentiality, is a contract. To abandon the tiresome social rules is to sail into an island where you are the ruler of the wild things, your vices. It may be simpler, it may be more fun, it may be more natural to you, but it also leaves you lonely. You begin to make sense of why the established rules are there as you find that it is much harder to govern yourself on your own. You begin to long after love and care of others, for no simpler reason than your need for it.

So once you choose to say 'No' to the wild things ('Oh please, don't go! We'll eat you up, we love you so!'), you sail back on a boat that no longer is yours alone, back to your room where the supper is still hot, waiting for you. Coming back to your struggles, but also to your nourishment.

You could choose to cry over the sad reality; of your pathetic need of others, and the pains of being a dependent - or accept the beauty of the one-way, perilous road, laid out for you so you do not need to walk through it alone. So if you need help, ask for it. You are never better fighting on your own.

P/S: Two links - this Youtube reading of the book and Professor Manderson's From Hunger to Love.