INTIMATE WORKINGS OF MY HEART

The fuller a soul becomes, the deeper runs the stream of its experience. It seems to me now that richness of life does not lie in what is observed, but in the one who observes. I remember sitting amidst a great throng—a sea of expectant faces, all turned toward me, eager to hear my voice, or perhaps more truly, to know something of me. Yet, in that moment of outward attention, I found myself retreating inward. A curious inversion occurred, as though the self I had worn as a garment was being slowly reclaimed by its rightful owner.

What I felt was not mere introspection, but a kind of awakening—an inward turning that disclosed chambers within me long veiled and unexplored. Beneath the still surface of my demeanour, some quiet work was being done in the deeper sanctum of the heart. I could not have named it then, but it was as though I was, at last, beginning to see—not with the eyes, but with that faculty of soul which sees more truly than sight. That day, things did not simply touch me and pass by as they had always done. They entered me, as arrows find their mark, and lodged where once there had been no door.

It dawned on me, with a kind of silent gravity, that there exists within each of us an inner life—an interior castle, if you will—that remains hidden until some quiet thunder stirs its gates. I do not know what transpires in that hidden place, but I know this: I have become unfit for casual words. The carelessness with which I once handled language seems now a kind of sacrilege. For words, I have come to see, are not mere vessels of sentiment; they are consecrated by experience. A true word—a true line of verse—is not born merely out of feeling, but out of the rich compost of living.

To find such words, one must live deeply. One must behold the landscape with reverence, speak with strangers, taste solitude, and look long into the eyes of beasts. One must feel the wind’s hush beneath a bird’s wing, and understand the holy patience with which the smallest flower turns toward morning. These are not ornaments of art, but its foundations.

And now, as the brief flicker of public acclaim threatens to cast its mirage before me, I find myself not exalted but sobered. The applause fades swiftly—as all echoes do—but what remains is the terrifying clarity that I must write well. Not for fame, but for truth. Not to be heard, but to be real.