the pursuit of utopia

it doesn't interest me if there is one god or many gods.
i want to know if you belong or feel abandoned;
if you know despair or can see it in others.
i want to know if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need to change you;
if you can look back with firm eyes
saying "this is where i stand."
i want to know if you know how to melt
into that fierce heat of living
falling toward the center of your longing.
i want to know if you are willing
to live day by day
with the consequence of love
and the bitter unwanted passion
of your sure defeat.
i have been told
in that fierce embrace
even the gods speak of god... David Whyte

i found these lines in an old book in a moment of serendipity. have you ever wondered how it is that you stumble upon something meaningful in the oddest of places at the most opportune of times? everytime i read these lines it fills me with a vague unease... i find the lines inspiring, yet oddly disturbing.

would you choose a life filled with intensity such as this?
i am not sure if i would. not anymore... not again...

why is it that it is only through pain that one can learn, evolve and grow?
we test for deep waters by dropping a stone into it and watch it as it falls. does the same rationale apply to living as well? do we have to fall before we know the breadth and width of our skies, the span of our wings and the firmness of the earth beneath us?

they say that some lessons need to be learnt... and events and situations will repeat themselves unless we have learnt from it, like children in a shuttered classroom, we repeat ourselves endlessly before the lessons are learnt by rote, only then perhaps can we get off from the dizzy, circuitous ride in the well of death.

my friend r says that passion and peace cannot co-exist... there is a thought here... if we are content and at peace, we are sedate; if we are restless, hankering after something, longing, pursuing something that we feel intensely for... then can we have peace as well?

each of us pursues our individual ideas of utopia.