Touch my heart so I know I’m living

Sometimes, in the strangest places, we get to feel something unexpected.

Life, love, connection, the Universe. Something takes us far and out, or deep within.

Sometimes this is all we are looking for. All the searching and traveling, maybe this is all we ever wanted from life. This feeling of being alive, feeling an inexplicable connection to another being, or rather, through another a connection to the entire universe.

Some years ago I was sitting in a bus, somewhere in the middle of the Philippines.

The bus had stopped for a small break in a small village, and while I was waiting for the bus to move again, my eyes heavy and tired, something caught my ears, and my heart.

At the front of the bus stood a small blind boy singing.

He had a red cassette player held tightly to his chest, and the more I tuned into his song over the background noise of the station, the more he captivated me.

This boy was maybe ten years old, and whereas I usually don’t interact with the many begging children we saw during our travels (It’s complicated, I wish they would go to school, I didn’t want to fund them singing & dancing in bus stations), there was something different about this one.

He made me cry.

His song and his voice moved me to tears. He took me above the rice fields, away from the bus, away from the physical and  into something pure and spiritual. His song was honest, his voice was innocent and I wondered what came over me. But it did not matter, I let it come.

My partner had a surprised look on his face when I frantically searched for coins to give this boy when he passed us. I don’t know if I wanted to give him my coins, more than that I wanted to touch his hand, to thank him for being alive just then and there with me.

This is essentially it, life.

Behind all our walls and possessions, beyond the travels and our goals, there is simply a search for connection. A search for someone, some thing to touch our heart so that we remember. We are alive.

We are living.