“Everyone’s got stuff.” is a statement that I sometimes repeat, to remind myself, the person yelling at me on the phone could be consumed or overwhelmed with something far less trivial. The person practically pushing my bumper as I drive the speed limit, in the right hand lane could be blinded to their own actions by worry or urgency of an event.
How do we deal with our stuff? Most of the time it’s bad habits, unhealthy coping mechanisms, really anything to fill the holes that only hope holds together. Even when something is found to try filling it, it was dug up elsewhere, simply moving the problem, instead of a solution filling it.
I am hungry and tired, day after day moving dirt around my pockmarked heart. As soon as a hole seems filled, close to overflowing with sweet temptations, it’s empty again, just as fast.
“You said hope holds them together. What hope, if this is a never ending push and pull?”
In a world where our happiness rules supreme, and comfort decides value, where is hope indeed. Unlike many, I don’t believe that the point of living is to be happy. This doesn’t stop the addict in me, always looking for that fix. Yet, accepting that the point of life is not, to “be happy” or achieve top social standing, is resolutely freeing.
I often fall into my holes. Cycles still haunt me, whispering, taunting. I know I could be, can be, so much better, so much more. But still, I am hungry, tired.
Someone told me, not too long ago, that in order to change something that you keep going back to, you first need to find the underlying reason. If you keep falling in a hole, get to the bottom of it. Dig deep, so to speak.
It’s a very personal, raw and vulnerable act, to face that place that we keep trying to cover.
If you couldn’t tell, by the lack of posts, and the tone of what is there, being as it is, I’ve been dealing with some holes. I still am.
Would you do something for me, friends and strangers? Would you try facing your holes instead of filling them, covering them? Would you sacrifice the façade of alrightness, the clinging to what feels like control? I’m not asking you to succeed in a single attempt, just try. Take off the VR goggles, the filters and fronts, face whatever your emptiness is and get to the bottom of what you’re trying to fill it with.
It might not make you happy, but it will make you free.
Rabbit & Crown 