You seek your place in the world. At first you look around in surprise – how strange everything is. Then slowly you grow used to your circumstances, to getting hungry, to crying when something hurts or when you are not understood, to flailing towards whatever you want to reach. And this stays with you for a long time, even if, once grown, you do not show it. Later you believe that this is security, and a world shatters within you when something threatens your security. But the discontent in you falls asleep, and you believe that circumstances cannot be changed and that all is well as it is.
The spirit of rebellion tempts you a little later. You seek not only your own limits but the bounds of existence as well. Until then you believed that everything around you was unchangeable, but now you recognise that everything can change, and what is more, that you yourself can change your affairs. What an illusion… Rebellion against all that is, world-sorrow for all that is not. You disown everything that surrounded you until then, and nothing that once stood for your supposed security and your bounded world is good any more. You busy yourself with a thousand new things, and all the while you are seeking yourself. You search for what gives you joy, and you find it hard to bear when something does not turn out as you had planned.
Perhaps you carry out your duties, if resentfully, perhaps you break out of the bounds like a colt longing for freedom. But how long does this freedom last? Until the first great love, which at first lends you wings, and when it ends, your flight is broken and you are left bereft. The world is black, for there is no one you could truly love – how painful…
Only the wish to forget – or sincere hope? – sweeps you on towards new adventures, and only slowly do you become aware that to set out once more on roads already travelled is folly. The same method always leads to the same result. If you repeat yourself, do not be surprised to end up in the same place. Then slowly this feverish scramble subsides, you furnish your life, gather about you a ring set with a stone, living knick-knacks and artificial flowers, and believe that now, behold, you have created your world, that at last you have the security you longed for. At last your life has found meaning.
This lasts for a while, and you zealously dust, but you will not move the porcelain figures aside. Then suddenly everything changes. Do not be surprised if the stone rolls out of the ring, if the knick-knacks shatter and the artificial flowers wither. You sit weeping on the ruins of your life, you mourn the headless figures, you mourn your losses, you mourn yourself. Do you dare to think that another collection is not the answer? Will you admit to yourself that all you wanted was to delight in your collection?
Until now you had a home, and now suddenly you have become a dog turned out of doors, unable to find your way home. Until now you were happy, then for a while you endured, but now it is over? There is nowhere further, nowhere lower. You have been cast down into the deep strata of your life, you come face to face with your most wicked demons and no longer wrestle with them. You let them drag you wherever they please. Disappointment, losses, failures – this is your bread. You no longer have the heart even to look up. You have turned your back on the Sun, and you face only your shadow. Not this, not that, nothing at all – nothing is the real thing. All along it was discontent that led you. You sought, but ignorantly, you searched, but selfishly, you tried, but foolishly. You have realised that even a successful life is a total failure, because it is no answer to the grievous pain of existence, to the soul's ultimate estrangement. But you have not yet unravelled the secret of how even a failed life can be successful?
If the bird takes wing but does not reach the heights of the heavens, it has still moved farther from the trap set for it on the ground, and it escapes. Even if you do not reach perfection, yet push off from the whirl of everyday life, you may escape the pain of the world, for your burden is already light. (Rumi)
What has happened to you, wanderer? Until now you have walked in a strange land, eternal guest?