The Void

There is a place inside all of us where no one can reach. No one and nothing. Not even our own mind, however free and light and searching it may be.

Some might believe it is a free place, perhaps the freest bit of us, the part of us that wanders like a spirit, not stopping anywhere long enough to grow roots. It leaves us behind, in our bounden state and moves though the skies, light as a bird. And tells of lives and loves we might have had. Some might even say, that it is where we hide our deepest desires, our fiercest hopes and our most unspeakable dreams. It could perhaps be where our imagination rests, where it ponders what might be, some day. What we could be, how we could fly, if we put our conscious minds to it.

Could it also be where our past rests, those forgotten moments and stories and sounds and heartbreak that led us to who we are today? Surely somewhere, deep in our consciousness, there is a treasure trove of precious moments that our minds have forgotten but our bodies and hearts remember? I know that place exists, for there are times when I know with certainly that I have lived this moment before, but my mind cannot recall it, no matter how hard I try. Maybe it is our soul that remembers, for it has been through our many lives, after all.

Sometimes I wonder if it is that part of us where the music rests. Have there not been times when a piece of music, or a song, or a note calls out to you so much that it draws out silent tears from one knows not where ? For me, some times, it is a long forgotten cadence of dance , that touches deep inside, and the body finds that source of energy, of its own making, and moves in tandem with divinity itself. It must come from somewhere within us, for I have learnt a million steps and rhythms but have never been taught this.

Maybe, just maybe, it is different for each of us. Maybe it is a place that is the spring-well of what we love, unique and our own and only ours. For what you love with all your heart, may be different for what sets my soul on fire. What you would give your all for, if only you could, is different for you and different for me. But we all have something we love like that, although we may not admit it, even to ourselves.

And so I have been searching for this place, searching for answers which help me understand what this feeling might be. For I can feel it. I cannot taste it, touch it or hear it but I know it is there.

But today I know. It is nothing. It is a void. A void born of our most painful memories, our most heartfelt unanswered prayers, our bitterest tears. Those moments totally devoid of hope, which we have all lived through before and will live through again. Our loneliest nights and even lonelier day breaks, those days where the strongest among us felt we could not go on, not for another minute. Those dusks filled with fear, as we waited for the black night to come upon us, trembling as we waited for it to consume us with its silence. Those months we felt unworthy and undeserving, uninspiring and uninspired, dispirited and disheartened. Do you remember those evenings when the tiredness just seeped in though your bones and the thought of opening your eyes was not to be countenanced ?

For this place we keep buried deep inside us, which we dress with the shroud of the lightness of freedom and love and happiness, that is the place where all of these moments and half memories go and find a home, my friend. They mingle and merge into one another and settle into this little hole, they giggle and smirk and cover themselves with our hopes and dreams and laughter and become, eventually, our resilience and our strength. And each time that you have used up strength that you knew not whence it came – it was this void, this hole, this place. Every time you came close to the brink and hope came from no where you recognised, it was this little bundle of miseries. Each time you were able to smile when you should have been crying, it was those smirking little nothings that lent you their hope born of despair. And every time, yes, every time, you needed to be strong for those you love, this it where it came from, my dear. This is where it came from.

So protect this void fiercely. Hold on to it with all your might. It will ensure you have just the right music when you need it, just the right tilt to your shoulders when the world is watching you lift your heaviest rocks. And just the right dancing steps when you need to trip lightly onto the great Big Top, with a bright smile on your face.