The Taste of a Lifetime

: Can you tell me why people are so strange? They spend an entire lifetime with someone they don't even love! Why do they stay? Do they have to stay, is that it? But why must they? Wouldn't it be better not to?

Can you imagine, Britta, having to give your whole life to someone you never gave your heart to—what kind of helplessness is that! And the person your heart truly wants, that's exactly who we end up losing in life! When the heart never finds a home in life's house, what meaning is left in living!

: Why are you thinking like that, Kalpa? Even if you spend your life with someone else, your soul still belongs to your own person—isn't there happiness in that? And who even gets that happiness? Tell me, how many can pull someone so completely into their own world, make them entirely their own?

: Britta, I don't want just a soul! I want to taste a lifetime's worth of living in each dawn of life... with my person. And what did you call it... happiness? No... not happiness, I only want peace. I want to overcome helplessness and become my person's refuge.

: You don't want happiness? Then what does refuge mean?

: There's comfort in refuge; but there's fear in refuge too! Hee hee hee... You're thinking, who goes looking for fear? No, no, love only comes when you conquer that fear...! Well, forget all this!

: Why should I forget? Life is very difficult. How will such talk help? It's not as simple as you think. You can't tame it so easily, Kalpa! You're being so childish! Understand, if you ask too much, it only becomes more stubborn! I'm afraid this time I might lose even the sight of it!

: Hee hee hee... that's exactly the fear! All right then, fine, let that 'difficult something' stay with me. If it won't be easy, let it be mine in all its difficulty.

: What do you want?

: The one I lose in my heart, I just want to be a little refuge in their helplessness. Let their difficult life remain their own, but I only want to brush one simple stroke of color across that difficult life. In their rigid moments, I want to float past them, touching them with the whisper of dry leaves.

You see, let my person know that life can be lived here exactly as they truly want to live it! I only want to live as that refuge in their faith.