The Art of Inheriting Secrets

by Barbara O'Neal

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water,” he said.

“‘I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.’ That’s what this is, you and me.”

Carrying my dry-erase marker over to the board on the wall, I made a to-do list. I knew people who used digital tools, but I needed to have them in the physical world.

I slept a solid eleven hours, falling far away into the other lands where the sleep spirits knitted me back together.

“You’re afraid too. Afraid you won’t find your place, that if you do, it might be taken.”

“That isn’t who you are. You’re afraid. And you cannot have a life of great meaning if you make decisions out of fear.”