The deer chases the wind until it learns it was the wind all along.
What you long for lives within you,
Humming in silence,
Waiting to be heard.
Find a place where the world grows quiet,
Not because the noise has vanished,
But because you have stopped chasing it.
Close your eyes,
Not like you're escaping something,
But like you're turning gently inward toward a place that has not spoken in years.
Let your breath come slowly,
Like smoke rising from sacred wood.
Inhale through the nose,
Feel it fill your chest,
Not just with air,
But with space.
Exhale through the mouth,
As if releasing the urgency to be anywhere else.
Let each breath be an anchor,
Drawing you down through thought,
Through persona,
Through memory,
Into that quiet chamber at the center of your being where truth is not spoken,
But remembered.
You have nothing to fix,
Nothing to prove,
And nowhere to go,
Only the invitation to be here,
Fully.
Now,
In the theater behind your closed eyes,
A new scene begins to unfold,
Vivid,
Moving,
Symbolic.
You find yourself in a city,
Not any city you've known,
But a great,
Glittering place of endless light and mirrors,
Where every corner hums with promise and every alley whispers,
You're almost there.
You begin to run,
Not with fear,
But with longing.
You are chasing something,
You can't quite name it,
But you feel it pulling you forward.
You run past neon signs offering success.
You run past crowds applauding your image.
You run through streets made of likes,
Trophies,
Approval,
Each moment a new performance,
Each turn a new hope that maybe,
Just maybe,
This will be the thing that makes you whole.
At every corner,
Something is offered,
A briefcase of money,
A flash of attraction,
A spotlight,
A platform,
A title,
A touch.
Each one feels like it might be enough until you hold it and feel the hollowness inside,
Like drinking salt water when you are dying of thirst.
So you keep running,
Until your legs ache,
Until your breath is ragged,
Until something deep in your ribs begins to whisper,
This isn't it.
But you keep running,
Because what if it's at the next corner?
The next door?
The next version of you?
But then,
In the middle of this restless sprint,
Something strange happens.
You begin to slow down,
Not because you decided to,
But because you're tired in a way the body can't explain.
You fall to your knees in the center of a quiet street.
The buildings fade into shadows,
The crowds dissolve like mist,
And all that's left is silence.
And in that silence,
A figure begins to emerge,
Not from the outside,
But from within,
As if stepping through a doorway you forgot was inside you.
They do not glow.
They do not preach.
They simply stand there,
Ancient and still,
With eyes like rivers and a voice like wind through trees.
And they say,
Without moving their lips,
You are what you seek.
At first,
You don't understand,
So they step closer and repeat,
Not louder,
But deeper,
You are what you seek.
What you chase in the world already lives in the center of your chest,
Not as a concept,
But as a flame.
In this moment,
The noise of the chase melts,
The city disappears,
And your awareness sinks,
Downward,
Inward,
Into the warm center behind your sternum,
The soft cradle between the ribs.
There,
You feel it,
Not a grand explosion,
But a steady glow,
A warmth that does not ask for recognition,
A light that does not flicker when unseen.
This is what you've been running toward,
Not knowing you were running away from it all along.
This warm center behind your sternum is the original flame,
The unmoved mover,
The place within you that never needed to become,
Because it always was.
And as you breathe into it,
It begins to grow,
Gently,
Joyfully,
Not to impress,
But to include all that you are.
The flawed parts.
The trying parts.
The child who wanted to be chosen.
The adult who chased his worth like a ghost.
All of it is welcome now,
Not fixed,
But welcomed.
You are not something to complete.
You are something to remember.
Take this truth now,
This flame,
This remembering,
And imagine it not as something you use,
But as something you live from.
See yourself tomorrow,
Waking not to chase the world,
But to greet it from the stillness within.
See yourself speaking less to prove and more to connect.
Choosing not from lack,
But from joy.
Moving slower,
Laughing softer.
Letting the light inside spill into the space around you like breath through an open window.
The truth is simple.
You are not behind.
You are not missing anything.
You are not unfinished.
You are what you've been searching for,
And now you remember.
Take a long,
Full breath.
Feel your feet.
Feel your chest.
Feel the quiet.
Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly.
Say,
Silently or aloud,
I no longer chase what I already am.
I no longer search outside what lives within.
I return to my own fire.
Let the breath return,
Gentle and natural.
Let yourself rest,
Not because you're finished,
But because you finally arrived.
And when it feels right to move again,
Return not as the one who longs,
But as the one who has remembered.
Remembered who they truly are.
