The Mentor (There’s a Moon Inside Every Human Being)
One day he will die but not anytime soon.
He’s sick but not knocking on heaven’s door sick.
Today, he wants to talk about retirement.
It is an adjustment. It is new. I’m not used to it yet.
I’m a psychotherapist and I follow the way.
The way of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus. The rabbi.
I studied with so and so in Chicago, my advisor.
Her whole thing was focus, and the life force behind prayer.
Then he started to cry, openly weep, tears falling easy.
I miss her. As soon as she spoke, I was won over. She knew.
She knew I got her and my work changed forever.
My dissertation changed the first time I heard her speak.
We stayed in touch all these years. Until the end. She died.
A grown man, I felt rudderless and lost, out to sea. The tears flowed.
He simply could not believe, in that moment, that this woman,
this icon, could leave him, throw him to the wolves to figure it out on his own.
And just like that he could not believe, in that moment, that his work,
All that he had built, all he had loved, was abandoning him too.
Throwing him to the wolves to figure it out on his own.
— -
There’s a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it. Give
more of your life to this listening. As
brightness is to time, so you are to
the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest. I should sell my tongue
and buy a thousand ears when that
one steps near and begins to speak.
RUMI
