FROM MAUI, WITH LOVE

First, I must apologize for my absence. I’ve been wrapped in school, internships, the job search and most important all, Maui. I’ve missed you, my blog family, so desperately. If I didn’t write today I fear that I wouldn’t have written for another hundred days.

I crossed off one of the "100 things to do before I die" in Maui. I swam naked in the ocean. It was so exhilarating—so freeing—better than any Disney theme ride or bungee jump—just me, my body and the water. I was struck by the simplicity of it all. I am to return to the earth this way, naked and unencumbered.

My ex-husband used to tell me that I wanted too much. I wanted the light and the dark, the hard and the soft, the ups and the downs. It’s funny. How. Life changes. So suddenly. Now, I have sober dreams and un-foiled visions. I’ve tucked in my pixie dreams.

These days, I require little. When everything is taken from you, you know that you don’t need much to survive. I’ve come to think of our incessant desire for commodities this way—in a parable perhaps...

It’s like a man who hasn’t eaten in a while and he believes that he is famished, so with greedy eyes he hoards things which he believes will fill him. In a moment’s time, his stomach swells and he is no longer hungry—but because he fears that food will not return, he continues to binge until finally, the sensation of fullness is numbed. He becomes a slave to the very thing that he thought would once bring him satisfaction—the ultimate cruelty.

I do not want to become enslaved to the excesses of life. I will feed until I am full. As softly as the sun slips behind the clouds, I vow to slip naked into the ocean again every year to remember the freedom of wanting nothing more. Love fortifies.