What Do We Chase in the Night?

What do we chase in the night?

Glimpses of heaven steal our attention and lead us toward love, while the shadows cast shame across the pure, beating heart. Desire can feel holy and dangerous at the same time. It calls to us with such familiarity, yet when it finally arrives, it can feel almost incomprehensible.

Why does something we want so deeply sometimes frighten us the moment it comes close enough to touch?

To feel, to seek, and perhaps finally to have can be a gift found within divine union. But union does not always mean possession. Sometimes the greater lesson is learning to see another person beyond our desires, projections, and expectations... to allow a moment to be perfect exactly as it is without demanding that it become something more.

There is freedom in that.

There is love in being able to sit beside someone without immediately asking where it is going. To hold another person's gaze without needing a promise. To recognize beauty without trying to capture it. To experience attraction without believing every spark must become a fire.

When we act from the heart, we do not have to be afraid of the dark.

When we move from love rather than hunger, we become less desperate for certainty. We can listen. We can notice. We can enjoy the mystery without allowing it to consume us.

There is always a light somewhere inside this temple.

That inner light is what makes the nighttime chase less frightening. It allows us to see where we are going. It allows us to slow down enough to recognize what we are actually reaching for. It reminds us that desire does not need to become desperation and that longing does not need to become self-abandonment.

Taking our time may be one of the deepest expressions of self-love.

So much of life teaches us to search outside ourselves: for the person, the touch, the validation, the answer, the invitation, the union that will finally make everything inside of us feel complete.

Yet every time we chase something into the external world, we eventually arrive at the doorway of the internal one.

Because the chase always ends somewhere.

Sometimes it ends in another person's arms.

Sometimes it ends in rejection.

Sometimes it ends in pleasure.

Sometimes it ends in silence.

And sometimes we finally catch the thing we have been running toward only to discover that it cannot give us what we believed it would.

That is when the real lesson begins.

Be mindful of what you are asking the night to teach you. Be mindful of which emptiness you are trying to fill and which part of yourself you are hoping another person will awaken. There is nothing wrong with wanting connection, pleasure, intimacy, or love. But there is a difference between moving toward someone because your heart is open and chasing them because you are trying to escape yourself.

Eventually, the music stops.

The body becomes still.

The messages stop coming.

The room gets quiet.

And there you are, lying in the darkness with yourself again.

So when the chase has finally ended and there is nothing left to distract you from the beating of your own heart, perhaps the most important question is not whether you caught what you wanted.

The question is: what have you really been chasing... and what were you hoping it would finally allow you to feel?

The Beautiful Story Never Told, Jo He and Mai Taeo

"I’m watching worlds go by. As eyes seek my attention and arms reach out for me. I realize how little i need from other people. I notice how people need and want me. How they are seeing me clearly again as if for the first time. It inspires me to feel their appreciation. To feel their love and know that i can welcome it without feeling dependent on needing all of it."