"Do I consider myself a Seeker?"

     This question came to me as I woke up this morning; it may have something to do with a dream I was having, though I can't remember. Still the question remains. Do I?

     I think we all are, after a fashion. We may not be conscious of it, but on some level we are all seeking something: knowledge, wealth, understanding, acceptance, love, forgiveness, something that answers a pleading in our souls and feeds an aching hunger in our hearts.

     From the moment we wake up in the morning we begin a journey. Our steps take us over the landscape of the day as we seek to complete those tasks waiting for us. They may be studies, chores or work assigned to us, but all are lessons of a sort. Through studies we gain knowledge, knowledge that hopefully will mold us into who we are meant to be, knowledge that can perhaps make this world a better place.

     Chores, those simple, tedious tasks of home and hearth teach us to appreciate the simple things in life: the way sunlight streams through a living room window to gild a wall and set a vase of poppies aflame; the smell of freshly laundered towels; the taste of a homemade lemon goat cheese. They also link us to something greater. As we tend to the chores around our home we are preparing a welcome for the companionship even the most solitary of us seek: the companionship of kith and kin, those people that make up our families (and by 'family' I mean all those dear to us, for are our best friends not family of a sort?).

     As we circle our homes tidying the living room, washing the mound of dishes left over from a child's graduation party or dust furniture, polishing a grandfather's mantle clock that now sits on your own mantle, we are seeking to create a haven, a place of warmth and welcome for those we love to return to, or just for ourselves. One of my fondest memories is of returning home to my apartment in a less-than-ideal neighborhood after a terrible day at work. Some weeks earlier I had visited a farmer's market and purchased twenty-four small pots of herbs, which I had clustered on my kitchen windowsills. I stepped in the door and paused in the stillness, taking in the sharp fresh scent of growing herbs, the golden tint of the walls as the late-afternoon sun shone through the north- and west-facing windows, my beat-up and stained but oh-so-comfy couch with my cat curled up in 'my' reading corner, the scattering of children's toys left lying about as we scrambled to get out the door over ten hours before. I remember crying, tears coming and simply spilling over. It wasn't sadness, but relief and perhaps joy, as the peace I had been seeking all day had finally been found.

     In the work we do, whether we love our jobs, hate our jobs, or just do them with no real opinion except to do them tolerably well, we are seeking self-fulfillment: earning a wage, the satisfaction of a job well-done. We learn not only satisfaction but responsibility, two aspects that will go far in teaching us what it means to be human.

     We are all seekers, each of us an explorer like those gone before, only we are not searching for a Northwest Passage or a fountain of youth, but instead a city of gold: the glittering palace of self-knowledge and self-realization, filled with such jewels as awareness, enlightenment, understanding, love and acceptance. The riches we gain when we embark on the journey of a Seeker are incomparable. I have begun such a journey, and I hope you will, too. It is not a simple trek--the road is circuitous and at times steep, but with diligence and faith we will eventually find that which we seek.