The Secret Signature of Each Soul
Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
-C. S. Lewis
Here I was, thinking I was the only one caught awake at night, haunted by this inescapable electricity of anxiety and incredible longing. I’m reading The Sacred Romance and the first chapter is all about this. The whisperings at the dead of night or early in the morning. There are nights when I feel like I will explode. I feel that I must create something or explosion will be imminent. I’m searching for this mysterious shape of energy that I cannot seem to outline, no matter how hard I try. So I just wander restlessly. On the internet, on the ceiling, in a book, in my hands. But I could never quite grasp the squirming fish. What is it about our souls? God must have intentionally placed a crater deep in our center as big as Him.
Restless Nest
It is night time and I am wide awake
with a longing for deep sea adventures
My restless hands won’t stop
erecting buildings and organizing index cards
And I can smell an orange being peeled
Somewhere someone is thinking
the same exact thoughts as me
and realizing that I’m thinking
the same exact thoughts as them
Maybe she’s my soul mate
or maybe he’s my son
Either way, the trees continue shaking
and by morning, I will be covered in leaves
Two things mark our Romance, Brent Curtis says, a longing for adventure and a desire for intimacy. And never before have I felt these things more. I remember in college, it was really bad. I literally couldn’t contain myself. I shook at night like a winter leaf. There were things vibrating madly all around me and it was like that game at Chuck-E-Cheese’s with the two silver handles that would progressively shake harder until you were forced to let go; you’d get like 50 tickets if you could hold on the entire time.
Will there ever be that moment when you can finally say, “At last, here is the thing I was made for!”? Is earth even big enough for such a moment? Or will our souls be forever incomplete and longing until we unite with Him eternally in heaven? Is it the indelible mark to remind us that we are not home yet?
There at least has to be a night that comes when the shaking stops. When, instead of recklessness, I will be overtaken by peace. When I can turn over and see my beautiful counterpart and hear the slow breathing of my children and rest assuredly in the destiny at hand. I know that then I could put the pencil and paper down. I can click off the lamp. I can fall asleep easily. I can let go and earn my 50 tickets.
