April 30, 2007

  • Searching for the Answer

    It's a normal weekday, like any other, and you sit in front of your computer catching up on all the usual sites you visit. It's dark outside, from the rain clouds looming overhead and you can hear the sound of the droplets hitting your window pane. Almost instinctively, you turn on your favorite music to drown it out, or perhaps to provide accompaniment. You stumble across someone's random Xanga entry that makes you pause and think, and then suddenly the wrong song comes up on random play, as if the music had a mind of its own.

    Thoughts of your life and your past flood your mind, as you're suddenly forced to  become introspective. Questions overwhelm you about who you are, where you've come to, and where you're going. Worst of all, you've become painfully aware once more of that hollow, empty feeling lurking somewhere deep in the shadows of your soul, hidden from view, buried where no one can find it. It's always there, though, always struggling to remind you of its presence and right now you'd like nothing more than to forget all about it. You turn to your usual escape...

    Shopping? Perhaps you adore designer labels and the latest fashions. Fast cars with sleek bodykits, large rims, and turbocharged engines. Your favorite past-time of smoking, to forget all of your worries in a cloud of blissful, hazy fog that obscures and dulls your senses. Drinking. Video games. Hot boys. Beautiful girls. Wild clubs. Watching movies. Talking on the phone with whoever is willing to listen. Reading Xanga entries.

    It helps for a little while, but the feeling inevitably comes back. Sometimes the same day, sometimes not for weeks or months. Perhaps the answer is love? If you find the perfect person, the person meant for you, your one true love, then maybe it will finally vanish for good. Maybe, just maybe, if you find that person, your missing half,. then you'll be whole again. Maybe the feeling is only there because you're half of an incomplete puzzle, searching for the other half to finally be able to form a recognizable, complete image. Maybe once you finally find your handsome prince or beautiful princess, the emptiness will disappear. After that, it's only natural everything else will fall into place, right?

    This is the answer we would be led to believe is the truth, because it continuously fuels our need to fill that emptiness with other things, and ultimately, fuels our need to spend money on the things which temporarily sate our desperately unquenchable thirst for fulfillment. We are afraid: afraid of being alone, afraid that the emptiness will never go away, afraid of so many different things we'll never admit to anyone else, no matter how deeply or completely we may trust them.

    The truth is an elusive thing that always seems to be just beyond our grasp. Like a thief fleeing through a large city, we make chase after him, hoping that once we capture him, he'll finally give us what we long for. What many of us don't realize is that the answer is right there in front of us, where it has always been. The answer lies within yourself.

    No other person, object, or material item will ever give you a magical answer. And your Prince Charming or Princess Aurora won't have a magical plug to seal up that hole. When things seem to be their worst, when you're depressed and lonely beyond consoling, when you're on your knees screaming hateful things at your God for what he's done to you, there is no magical answer that will fall from the heavens for you.

    Some way, some how, you must find the power within yourself to stand back up again. That strength has and always will reside in the one place you don't want to look: within yourself. And it's not easy, because looking inside yourself also means confronting all of those other things lurking in the dark corners of your soul, but it's the only way you'll ever find the answers you want, the strength you're searching for, and that shimmering, sparkling light you keep hoping will emerge.

    All of those other things are just distractions.

    And if there's anyone who knows all about distractions, it's me.


    (Originally posted July 20, 2004)

Comments (2)

  • "...if you find that person, your missing half,. then you'll be whole..."

    You are the only one that has the ability to make yourself whole.  No one or nothing can do that for you; likewise, in order to have a "healthy" relationship, two whole people must come together as one...nothing less...it simply doesn't work any other way.

  • wow........you just verbalized or wrote the thoughts in my head. 

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