I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments and set out on a truth-seeking journey either externally or internally and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself then the truth will not be withheld from you. Felipe? I can't help but believe it, given my experience.
A married woman realizes how unhappy her marriage really is, and that her life needs to go in a different direction. After a painful divorce, she takes off on a round-the-world journey to "find herself".
You know, if you could clear out all that space in your mind that you're using to obsess over this guy and your failed marriage, you'd have a vacuum with a doorway. And you know what the universe would do with that doorway? Rush in. God would rush in. Fill you with more love than you ever dreamed of. Man. Groceries. I think you have the capacity someday to love the whole world.
— Where should we go?
— To the best restaurant in town.
— Of course.
— My place.
— Subtle.
It begins when the object of your affection bestows upon you a heady hallucinogenic dose of something you've never even dared to admit you wanted an emotional speedball of thunderous love and excitement. Soon you start craving that attention with the hungry obsession of any junkie.
When it's withheld, you turn sick, crazy, not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but now refuses to pony up the good stuff. Goddamn him, and he used to give it to you for free. Next stage finds you skinny, shaking in a corner certain only that you'd sell your soul just to have that one thing one more time.
Meanwhile the object of your adoration is now repulsed by you. He looks at you like someone he's never met before. And not have to, like, you know, justify it. The irony is you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a mess. Unrecognizable even to your own eyes. You asked me to come here? Here l am. And it turned into something else.
That's a great response to a conversation. Goddamn it. You have now reached infatuation's final destination.
What if we just acknowledge that we have a screwed-up relationship and we stick it out anyway? We accept that we fight a lot and we hardly have sex anymore but that we don't wanna live without each other. And that way we can spend our lives together miserable but happy not to be apart.
I disappear into the person l love. I am the permeable membrane. If l love you, you can have it all. My money, my time, my body, my dog, my dog's money. I will assume your debts and project upon you all sorts of nifty qualities you've never actually cultivated in yourself. I will give you all this and more until l am so exhausted and depleted the only way l can recover is by becoming infatuated with someone else.
— He make you pretty, find you husband, you work hard for him.
— That's exactly opposite of why l'm here.
— Everybody need husband.
If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments and set out on a truth-seeking journey either externally or internally and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself then the truth will not be withheld from you.
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