Monday, June 30, 2008

Coincidence? I think not...

Coincidence, that one word people use to describe when something happens at that perfect timing. I have stumbled through many of them, describing them as such, just coincidence nothing more. Not any more though, the fatalist has come out in me once again.

Take Saturday for instance. I was wondering around my local grocer when my phone rang with a number I didn't recognize. Not being the cautious person who screens calls I promptly answer it. Behold it is an old friend of mine from years past, come to tell me of his grail quest and to catch up. This couldn't of happened at a more perfect time, a coincidence perhaps or maybe fate, considering I have once again rekindled my fire for the grail. After a few minutes of small talk we get down to the reason he called me... his quest. He had told it to many others that he has surrounded himself with and they all gave him crazy looks, distant "mmHmm", and other modest things one does when you don't agree with what one is telling you but don't really want to comment what you feel. My friend started to doubt his feeling for the quest, to doubt his soul's cry for adventure to become more complete. I promptly stated that it is foolish to not listen to your inner pulling, if you feel like you need to do it then you should. Just that one sentence was all he needed to reaffirm his position on what he should do and with great fervor declared "damn the torpedoes! I'm going to California". Of course he didn't up and go right then and there. No he has a few loose ends to tie up, like we all do, before he can undertake his quest.

It was nice talking to him as I got to tell him of my quest, which I will detail later. To tell someone who actually understands and isn't thinking "love struck romantic" with every sentence I utter to them was a nice change of pace.

Speaking of a change of pace...

Coincidences are really fate giving you an opportunity to make a choice to follow your grail path or to not. The coincidence can be big or small but it is always just enough to get you thinking about them, thus they have done their job. Sometimes all it takes is thinking about someone you haven’t heard from in a while and having them call you in the following week. Other times it takes a huge in your face approach to get you to realize what exactly is going on.

If you choose not to follow the path, the quest, then that too is a bit fated to be as your not ready to undertake such an adventure BUT, in my humble opinion, you wouldn’t be getting the signs or the calling to partake in such a quest if you weren’t deemed ready to in the first place. That feeling like you need to be somewhere or do a certain action, sometimes called intuition, doesn’t just strike whenever it fancies. No, it comes when you are ready for it, ready to move on to the next area of your quest.

The long view of my life has proven to me many times now that every action leads to the next, certain events in my life had to have happened for me to be where I am now. I would not appreciate the love and friendship of certain people if I did not have the past experiences I have accumulated in my journey to be the person that I am. For that is really what the grail quest is about, self betterment. Not just betterment though, self completion. To become whole in every aspect of your life, finding happiness in the little details that are around us that we miss normally going about our daily lives. To have that child like wonder of the world again, the giddiness of that first love, the amazement of the things around us. Getting back to that state while retaining the knowledge we have gathered in our years, that is the goal of the grail quest.

The grail is just symbolism for the thing that you yearn for. The thing that makes your soul cry out for, to be close to, to exist in or around. It could be a certain state or country, a man or woman, even an ideal that you want to hold closely to your daily life. All these things are but stepping stones on your journey to self completeness. It is hard to say if and when the grail quest will ever end. If your grail is a man or woman who is to say that after you are together that you both won’t merge your grail quests together and thus have a companion on your journey. It’s likely we will never finish our quests, but that is not to discourage the attempt as the very act of going on your quest is moving toward the self completion.

The funny thing about the grail quest is that it may take years before you get your next calling. In my experience it has taken two years since the last time I felt like I had to do something. I followed what I felt like I had to do and it has done very well for me. Now I am feeling that calling again, but two fold. I feel an intense need to be in New York, right now the excuse is to go to the Culinary Institute of America that happens to be in New York but that might not be the actual goal in reaching New York, I do know that I need to be there though and will try to get there as soon as I am able to.

The second part of my quest is a need to be with someone, so much so that I have done things really out of character. I have gone out of my way to be with this person, to the point of flying out to see them after only three weeks of knowing them. After returning from my trip I put in for a transfer to a base much closer to her. This was met with actions very out of her norm as well, letting someone who she had only known for a few weeks stay at her place, let alone her bed. Coincidence that we, at the same time, decided to go against what we normally would do? I think not, it was good ole fate. Taking that huge step in the grail quest to where I got to be a part of my grail, to feel what its like, if only for a moment was one of the best leaps of faith I have taken. It's been a long time since I smiled as much and was as happy as I was those four days that I spent with her, my love, my grail...

And with that, my mind has gone quiet for the night so I bid you farewell until next time.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Impossibility sucks. It drives me insane, like trying to think about infinity. How can I achieve what I need to achieve? My Gods, it is a scary thing. - Alchemy [al kuh mee]-noun
1. The use of TIME, PRESSURE, AND HEAT to transform a crude element into a more purified element, usually gold.

Boy oh boy risk and sacrifice as the only thing I have to sacrifice is to take that risk. What can I do though man? Damn the Torpedoes!