when I pray

When I pray, all I ask is: the strength, dear Buddha please, to realize both dreams I've had and dreams I could never imagine. 

       My father and I drove past my elementary school a week ago.

When I pray, I pretend I'm there, in an unforgettably bright place, my mind a fortress, my heart an open flame burning white-blue. Let there be a voice from an ancestor who loves me whisper behind my ears, "You are here. You are true."

       I realized he drove me to school for 13 years, always in a truck. I realized how old he was. A glance to his face and a much skinnier skinnier frame.

When I pray, I lift both hands for the strings between my soul and my ancestors and spirit guides. How sure I am, that they surround and hum around me.

        I realized I had as much blind faith in myself as my parents did. Sitting in a car driven by your parents makes you feel like you're going somewhere without forcing anything to happen. 

When I pray, I pretend I hear their music. Wisdom, insight, words that passed through mouths I knew but came from somewhere beyond, all along. Words that found me exactly when I needed them.

        I was convinced, in every backseat, that doors will open. I just have to sit in the right seat.

When I pray, I feel a vibration course through me, pulling me apart. 

        My parents' gazes never changed. As long as I was in school, I was going to be someone great. That's the truth they felt in their bones. That's the reason I shiver with fear, every step I take. A heavy necklace interlacing across my throat, the charm a constant dull weight on my chest bone. 

When I pray, I wonder if time could reverse itself to before my reckoning. Back when I had time to afford being as careless with time as I wanted. Dog day summers. Sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my little sister, writing parodies of Taylor Swift songs.

        One day, there will be a reckoning. No matter your chances, you will always have a weight to remind you one thing: succeed and bring honor. 

When I pray, I think about that beautiful past. How I yearn to be that comfortable again. Maybe that's all I miss. That comfort of being a mindless, choice-less child.

        Culminate. Ruminate. Until I can only do one thing: choose. I have to choose well. I have to choose and then fight for that choice to be as true as myself. 

When I pray, I no longer see only myself. There's a moment and more where I feel the veins of the earth and the universe bleed through me. And then my family.

        It is both a burden and a gift. I am no longer a student. I am now the chooser. The maker. There is no academic institution that could hold me in that comfortable, easy-to-measure success anymore.

When I pray, I realize

        that all those years of my life when my Dad would drive me to school, I sat comfortably in that backseat. Watched the same houses go by for 6 years. Watched different houses go by for 3 years. Watched different houses go by for 4 years. I sat there comfortable because someone else had to bear all the choices. 

        I didn't have to bear one real choice. I bore few consequences. Life was a game, a numbers game or a letter grade or who were my best friends. 

        I was allowed that grace and that youth and that carefreeness, privileged to that backseat to life, because someone else drove me to school.

When I pray, I learn my life again. In a small glimpse. Like how in one drop of water, Buddha had seen, before Western science ever did, all the micro-organisms that could heal us and hurt us. More than life will ever know lived in one drop of water.

When I pray, I only learn and re-learn how blind I've been. How wrong I was. How hopeful I was. How all I can repeat in my head is for "me, me, me," for "I, I, I." 

        I want to re-learn my life again so I can be well. So I can choose well.

        I want to be well. To choose well.

        See well, to be well, to choose well.

What do I see now? When I pray? 

Exactly like you. An oceanic darkness. That's all I see. 

        I see no answers. None. 

        Just hope? 

        Because anything can live and hide in darkness. Things and possibilities I never imagined could exist are things I've never seen. And how can I see them ever, if they've only been in darkness. 

        So of course, darkness is all I'm supposed to see. 

        Of course, darkness is hopeful. 

        There are things I haven't seen yet. 

        In the reflections of my life and past lives. In the present day. In the futures I glazed quickly over with a brush, "I'll figure it out." 

         So when I pray, I am calm. I am still. To be ready and stronger and calmer, resilient to whatever moves and lives in the darkness. 

Every choice I make now, with the strength I keep praying for, is a different thud, a different noise, waking up different creatures and possibilities. I need the strength to carry the weight of each choice, just as others have done so for me. 

It is my turn to wake my own leviathans.