Stories Told Through Symbols 🌿

A thick haze hangs all around me.

The kind of fog where you can barely see the tips of your own shoes, let alone any metaphorical life path. I’m honestly disappointed — for a long while, I see absolutely nothing. Great start to a meditation, truly. But I stay patient.
Eventually, something takes shape in front of me. A staircase — white, endless, and of course leading upward.

And then I see her. A little goat sitting casually on one of the steps. She’s adorable, curly, and very determined to get my attention. Is this some kind of test? If in meditation I keep meeting myself, then I have the freedom to choose what happens next. Instinctively, I want to scoop the goat up, hold her close, and carry her with me… except, surprise. She’s absurdly heavy. So much for that. Upwards I go.

A woman in a grey cloak emerges from the mist.

Her hood is pulled so low I can’t see her face. With trembling hands, she offers me a basket of eggs. And because I don’t want to be rude (and because there’s probably some unwritten rule about not lecturing mysterious grey women), I take two eggs and tuck them into my pockets.

The stairs lead up into a milky emptiness, until the fog suddenly begins to part. 

And there, at the top, appears the Pantheon.

My heart leaps. Finally! Something is up there after all!

I climb the last rise. Majestic white columns stretch skyward… and behind them? Only grey clouds. I sit down in the grass, exhausted. And I feel nothing. No excitement at reaching the top, no disappointment — just a flat, dull nothing. I don’t even feel like going back down. So I just sit there and meditate. A meditation inside a meditation.

And then a simple, uncomfortable question flickers through my mind:
Why am I trying so hard to get to the top if I already know it won’t change me?

I could have a better life, more opportunities, more travel, more joy… but then what? All of that is outside, out there somewhere — and yet still somehow not quite mine. The only thing that can truly move me forward has to come from within.

I walk back down.

And suddenly — I’m standing on the same staircase again. Climbing the same path upward. Once more, the woman. Once more, the basket. But this time I see something different. She’s not handing me the eggs to pass them on — she’s giving them to me because she needs help. Quiet, modest help, without words.

I hold my palms above the basket to warm the eggs. And in that moment the shells begin to tremble, crack… and little chicks hatch. They chirp with joy, the woman lowers her hood, I see her face for the first time, and she even smiles. She places one tiny chick into my hands.

And there’s the little goat again. But this time, I have water. She drinks, and suddenly she no longer needs me to carry her — she climbs the stairs beside me, light and effortless, as if she’d been waiting for this moment all along.

stand before the Pantheon again. And once again, everything is the same. White columns, clouds, silence. Fine, then — if it won’t comfort me, I can at least give it a new coat of paint.

I paint the columns red, blue, and green.

The Pantheon looks a bit cheerier. But my sadness stays.

I watch the goat calmly chewing grass and the chick pecking crumbs from the ground. I sit beside them, stroke them, and something inside me loosens. The heaviness drops away. A quiet peace spreads through my chest.

And still… the emptiness is there. Just no longer sharp. No longer stabbing.

And out of nowhere, a thought comes:
Maybe this is how God feels.

Having everything, yet still holding a small pocket of emptiness within it all.
Love is the highest thing we can reach. The furthest step on the staircase. It can’t turn my gaze away from the emptiness, can’t reshape the horizon, can’t clear the fog.
But it can balance it. Soften it. Embrace it.

And that is enough.
That is what reconciles me with life.