“Holes in the soul”

Subtitle: Finally!

I don’t know who first coined the phrase. Nevertheless, it’s long been an apt descriptor of an (my) emptiness. A sense (really, senselessness) that life is without point or purpose. Like an organic jigsaw puzzle with a piece (or pieces) missing.

I’m also not sure of its origin. Was it my formative years from which I didn’t get something I wish I’d gotten or got something I wish I hadn’t? I don’t know. For the longest time I blamed my parents for having failed me. Yet, finally, I realized that they did as best they could; even more, that my life is my life to be lived. Thus, finding fault with anyone else, an abdication of my personal responsibility, only could carry me so far (truly, nowhere).

Or is this inner hollowness simply (profoundly painfully) the way I’m made? The way God “formed my inward parts, knitting me together in my mother’s womb”?[1] I don’t know. And, even if so, I don’t blame God.

I, in compassion, also wonder whether others experience this blankness, meaninglessness? If so, all of the time? Some of the time?

What I do know is that I have spent much of life trying, testing all manners of diversions to fill the holes in my soul. None of it worked. I couldn’t fill the holes. And only relatively recently have I discerned, finally, that the holes can’t be filled. They are a part, a significant part of what makes me who I am.

So, all diversions aside, I’m learning to live, finally, with the holes in my soul. For it’s all about finding and being me.

One of my fears? That the me I find won’t be any bigger or better than the one I already know. Nevertheless, the journey to discovery is worth all the risk.

© 2022 PRA

#holesinthesoul #lifesjourney #thejourneyofselfdiscovery #selfacceptance

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[1] Psalm 139.13