The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.

ernest hemingway

Deep within you there is a tiny space that contains the infinite universe. Most people won’t tell you this because if you knew, you’d stop going to work and instead spend your whole day roller blading or skeet-shooting or whatever it is that makes that space light up like a disco. It wants your attention, this empty and infinite void, but if you don’t know it’s there, you don’t think you can hear it. It’s like an air conditioner running constantly in the background. You’ve gotten so used to the hum that you don’t notice until it shuts off and the sudden silence makes your ears ring.

The void doesn’t hum like an appliance, though. It whines as the universe pours itself into you. It roared in triumph when you slid into the world, and then you wailed your very first wail to match it. Every day from that point forward, you were told to hush, go to school, go to work, get a grip, settle down, do the right thing. The void urged you to run, jump, cackle, and play the way it propelled your ancestors across oceans on a quest for blood and greatness.

Meanwhile, things fall apart. You’re stressed. You’re sad. You feel alone. The scream gets louder and you let it blend into the background with all the other demands that you’ll get to later, when you have the time and energy to pursue the passion stirring deep within you. The scream intensifies, aching for your attention. It wakes you up in the middle of the night to remind you that life is what happens when you’re busy scrolling Netflix. It growls from deep inside, and bounces around the walls of your skull, suddenly sounding like uncertainty, doubt, regret, and fear. In quiet moments, you may hear a wild wail like a too-close coyote at sundown. It urges you to remember you’re alive.

It confronts you with the fury of your own potential, the monstrous possibilities that would emerge if you stepped out of your own way and came home, to yourself. If you can you sit with that roar long enough you’ll find it switches pitch into an invitation to reclaim the power you gave away to your bad habits and lowered expectations.

Listen with compassion and you will hear that the screaming inside you is your calling to return to a life that feels like home. With your attentive ear and gentle acceptance, the screaming gives way to quiet guidance and shows you that what you crave is on the other side of the things you let limit you. In a low roar like a close ocean, it invites you to unbreak yourself, pointing you toward the tools that you’ve always had inside your limitless inner void.

I sought and found a thousand homes in an eager and doomed quest to find a place that smelled right, felt right, had the right people and room for my books. What I never did, until now, was find a home within the echo chamber of the screaming of my heart. The scream is the booming echo of the fireworks that God shot off the day you were born. It’s a distant ping of the Big Bang, broken into billions of pieces and planted like seeds inside each one of us. Let it whisper from within and remind you of the nature of the power its always been asking you to claim. Allow it crack you open until you shed your skin and transform.

The scream is the call to live, and it’s coming from inside the house.

Welcome home. Unpack your baggage.