There have been many times in my life where the familiar has dropped away and I am left sitting with unfamiliar emptiness. It’s hard to describe, and in the past I’ve rushed to fill it up with something new. I’m not rushing. I’m using this unfamiliarity to do my best to get confident with uncertainty.
I’ve often been the strong one, the one who takes up the slack, fills in for, does for, listens to, provides for… But this role has fallen away too. I recognize the face of the self within who did that. To be useful was a way to feel needed. To please others a way to be liked. These needs too have fallen away. I sense a new face emerging in my being. I don’t know who she is yet, and I want to learn her.
Emptiness is not emptiness. It is simply space for that which I don’t know yet. A friend has described it as “no thing-ness.” There is an edginess to fullness and emptiness, to space and no space that demands presence. I want to bring curiosity and wonder into the experience, but sometimes I instead find depression and isolation. Yet these are emotions, and they pass when I intensify them. What is left when they pass is a stronger feeling of presence.
For the moment I am content to be waiting.
