My Heart’s Longing …

My heart’s longing is for a peaceful world and that warring factions everywhere somehow wake up to the senselessness of continuous destruction, bloodshed, and killing.

I yearn for a bliss-ninny’s contentment in love. To find the eternal satisfaction popular media romanticizes. To be soaked in happiness and appreciation for all that I have, instead of focusing on innocuous things that matter little.

My heart’s longing is for the ability to one-day continue my education and complete as many degrees as I want. This is not just because I must be a ‘woman of letters’, but to satisfy myself at having accomplished so much given the dodgy package life gave me with which to build something, anything and hopefully, good.

I yearn for lots of future travel. To check out Vietnam, Chile, Finland, go to Scotland and Cuba again. I hope to work for a friend of a friend’s NGO in Nepal.  All of this—while I write books.

My heart’s longing is to purge my body of the tumultuous emotional tangents I wander off on occasionally.  I want to feel rage against the ails of the world but not lose myself to them.

I yearn for an ever-widening global community, the resources I need as an effective source of support to women’s groups in developing countries. To find some way to honour the struggles of women, especially the isolated and poor, and help advance them toward their immediate goals.

My heart’s longing is that my father-in-law fares well tomorrow for his first chemotherapy treatment for an aggressive stage 4 non Hodgkins lymphoma. However, he said yesterday, “I feel rotten!” and I am afraid he will not do well. I think he will deteriorate rapidly and feel distraught about it. The toll this is taking on my mother-in-law is gut wrenching to watch.

I yearn for the day when people (including myself) become mindful of their choice of language.  Their intentional and inadvertent use of sexist stereotypes, regular ‘slams’ (verbal abuse) against women, even when the speaker is also female.

My heart’s longing is for harmony within this soul of mine, hewed brutally by repeated criminal victimization.  I need courage when I feel like an empty scarecrow faking bravado in a corn field, too alive with the flapping wings of six half-starved four-foot buzzards. I hope for strength.