The Endless Symphony
As far back as I can remember I have felt different from everyone else. I don’t mean to say I thought I was better than everyone else, only that I was destined for something out of the ordinary—some insight or experience or talent that would set me apart from the people around me. I saw things no one else saw, as if there were colors and textures to the air that were right there in plain view, but no one else could see them. Yet, there they were, as obvious as pillars holding up the ceiling. It could be something out among the stars, a feeling inside that we would, all of us, one day, get the chance to flit among the galaxies and know everything. Or it could have been the coarseness of Long John Silver’s beard—the exact length and glisten on each spiky hair of his cheek—as my classmates struggled to envision the basest details of Treasure Island. More often, it was an intuit, a sure knowing that someday I would set myself apart from everyone I knew by doing something special, achieving a goal that the others could only dream about.
And behind it all was Other. Most called him God, or Jesus, or Allah or Jehovah, or . . . well, I didn’t know who or what he was, really, or even if he was a he. Only that someone—some unimaginably patient and benevolent consciousness—was behind it all. Behind every move, every breeze, every dot of sunlight. Manipulating, watching, blocking, waiting, directing—causing “coincidences” that could be called miracles, and bringing people and events into my life as freely and as often as Mozart wrote symphonies. Hearing the perfect music in his mind before he ever set a note to paper, Mozart knew the parts each musician would play and how the final masterpiece would sound when they all came together.
So, too, I suspect, does Other- the universe, some would say -offer each of us a part or parts to play. We can decline, of course, choosing to sit in the audience and listen. There's nothing wrong with that . . . except missing the thrill of being part of something bigger and grander than sitting front row center. But not me. I want to be part of that endless symphony.
