We want the world and the world wants us

There is a girl who will be a woman soon 
 and I am still a boy, trying to understand what true manhood is 
and again the kookaburras laugh 
 and it’s as though they are in on one big joke 
and they laugh at me, not because they are mocking me, 
but because they know the world, and they know who they are 
in the world, just as they know who I am and will be
in the world, just as they know that if we will be – or at least try to be –
who we are, then the world is a place we will want to be;
a phenomenon that we would wish to participate in.

and she has made me aware that I want to love, 
and love more, and love more deeply,
and I wish it upon her
 but it’s as though there is a divide,
just as there can be a divide between the world and I.

How do we close that gap?
 How do we close that gap?

there is so much to be said and discovered,
so much and yet it requires more than language to say it,
it requires a connection to where we are and, of course, 
who we are where we are
now,
 and it’s perpetual and eternal, it can never be grasped
just as it beckons us to grasp it,
but we distract ourselves with tiny screens, because there we find
the instant gratification that temporarily dulls our aloneness,
 there we take ourselves out of the world because we deem the world
 too hard a place to be.

but what if instead we asked the world a question,
and what if the world responded,
perhaps not with a definite answer, but maybe with another question?
What if we began to listen,
 not to what we thought and think we wanted and want to hear,
but listen to the places and the way we resonate with the world,
to begin to feel for our place in the world?
What if we stopped trying to escape and started to wonder if perhaps,
 by some bizarre mystery and against all odds,
we actually belong here.
What would it take to feel that this world is a place we not only want to be,
but a place in which we belong?

Ask the world: what do you want from me?
and then ask yourself what you want from the world.

listen honestly
 and answer honestly

and maybe we will find that we want the world
and that the world wants us.