CALLING WITHOUT AND WITHIN

I walked home the long way last night. The sky was deep and brooding and there were flecks of rain in the air. It was dark.

I stopped on the little bridge that spans the two sections of the lake. The lake, if you can imagine it, is roughly the shape of a number eight; right in the middle, the bridge lets you cross the narrowest part in a few clackety steps.

The wind swelled through the trees. The lake rippled below the walls of bright windows on the other side, catching the light and pushing it towards me. It was as though the wind was suddenly calling to me, softly singing my name in the breeze.

I took a deep breath, letting the cold air fill my lungs.

Years ago, there had been nights just like this.

I'd walk back to the bus stop through campus and stop by the lake, a different lake, far away. The warm lights of the University Library would glimmer across the water as I would stand there, dreaming and thinking. I felt free, somehow, alive.

I'd listen to the wind, whispering, and I'd watch the clouds roll through the darkening sky. I'd feel the first few spots of rain and I'd hear my name somewhere, calling without and within.

I would have been about twenty - unaware of all the things that were ahead then, and behind me now - the friends I would make and lose, the songs I would write, the love I would learn to forget and the pain I could not have imagined.

Yet really, I was just the same - standing on that little bridge, rucksack on my back, listening to the trees. Hope calls me now as it did then - and I am still alive. I don't always feel it; things feel stuffier than they did, restricted and old.

Out there in the wild, where the wind rustled through the trees and the lake lapped against the little bridge, I was suddenly reminded that it doesn't have to be that stuffy, that there is a young person inside of me who still yearns for all the same things that are carried by the wind.

I can still hear my name, I can still feel hope and destiny calling me on the breeze, and I can still answer its call, if I want to. If I want to.

I walked home the rest of the way with cloudy eyes.