Desperate

I was born desperate to find out why

I had been born in the first place.

When I grew old enough to understand 

language, I discovered no one was asking

“why” about much of anything. The major

question on everybody’s lips was: “What’s 

next?”  over and over. I went along with the

program,  “What’s next?” until college

because that was the program for everybody.

What finally happened can be best explained 

by a joke, told by John Koerner at a 

folk concert at St. Olaf College in 

Minnesota in 1967:

A soldier in the army kept showing up at the

headquarters, going into the offices and taking

out pieces of paper from filing cabinets, looking

at them, saying out loud: “That’s not it.” and

dropping the sheets on the floor. He was told

to stop, he was reprimanded, he was sent to the

base psychiatrist, spent some time in the brig,

all to no avail. As soon as he could, he’d go back 

to the office, remove sheets of paper, say: 

“That’s not  it.” and throw them on the floor.

Finally, the army gave up. As they handed him

his discharge papers, he looked at them and said: 

“That’s it.”

So, I had this question:  “Why?”

The only questions I heard 

in the air around me were:

“What’s next?” and “What’s left?”

I felt strongly that Buddhism had an answer.

When I met my teacher, I recognized:

“That’s it.”

*         *          *

…and I realized then, but didn’t recognize,

until just now that I’m writing,

that we had known each other 

forever already.