Labyrinth

Learning the art of being lost on purpose

To walk a healing path is to enter a labyrinth. The path twists and turns, bringing you closer to the holy grail of recovery only to lead you away into the darkness again.

For a long time, you know the possibility of wellness only by the merest of fragments that appear, radiant and astonishing, just around a tight turn in the path.

Photo by Altaf Shah

Pursuing those fragments, you become labyrinthine, losing your form and becoming the path itself. You come to understand that the mystery nestled in your heart can only be approached sidewise and with both utmost care and utter abandon. To approach it in straight lines is to lose it in plain sight. To focus a hunter’s gaze on it is to cause it to vanish like silver mist at dawn.

And so you begin to speak in riddles, because straight talk is too small for the mystery you house. You invite everyone into the circus of your life, because the tricksters and clowns dance for all. And still you keep a fierce solitude so as to hear the love song of the bruised yet vivid world in which you walk.

Sometimes you stop, holding the gathered fragments, bright in your cupped hands. When you gaze softly at them, whispering poetry like a lover, they seem to form a picture.

Little by little, you are coming back together.