July 14
The musk deer carries the scent in its own body and roams the forest searching for it. What you hunt outside has long been living in you.
Songs of Kabir (freely rendered)
Listening mode
The musk deer carries the scent in its own body and roams the forest searching for it. What you hunt outside has long been living in you.
Sometimes someone tells you he finds it easy to be at rest around you. This surprises you. That very evening you were restless, thinking about an outstanding bill and wondering whether you were even listening properly. Of the calm he means, you noticed nothing.
Perhaps he is right all the same. Some qualities can hardly be perceived from the inside, because they are what you perceive with. You don't feel your patience as patience, at most as an absence of hurry, and when something is absent it rarely feels like a possession. You feel more clearly the moments when it fails you.
So it can happen that you long for something others have long known in you. Their remark doesn't end the longing, though. You can't check it; you can only believe it or doubt it. It isn't even certain that your restlessness and the calm he finds with you are opposites.
He stays sitting a while longer. You pour more tea and think about the bill again.
