
I had a conversation with a friend recently who I was trying to preach the “forever good news” to and he said to me, “What if things are never going to be ok…” and I really struggled to find something to say because he had really been through tough times. Iv heard this question so many times and I’d really like to be that writer who always soothes your soul with a positive song when you come here on this platform but if I’m really honest, I don’t know if things will always be ok for you in whatever you are facing. Most times I don’t know if things will be ok for me too. Most of us grew up reading and hearing fairytales and so our mind is hell-bent on looking for the light at the end of the tunnel when sometimes that tunnel is a dead end. But the older I get, I acknowledge how life can be really hard for most people. Life can feel like a battlefield. It can feel really empty even for those who have found purpose or “success” to their journey especially if that purpose or success doesn’t give them the peace they expect to receive after searching so much. Then there’s people who just have it really tough for stretches of time and they are exhausted. These people live with this question in their heads, will it ever become better? Will it ever be ok? Will I ever have a smooth life, why am I the one who has to struggle, the one who has to fight all the damn time. They don’t know if they have the strength to face a brand new day and keep fighting. Their spirits are battered daily and they are dragging shreds of their remaining souls through a world that calls them weak, uninspired, demotivated and shameful. The society has managed to blame people for their circumstances and in as much I believe that we have power to change our circumstances and make better choices, I now also understand it’s harder for some to get “there”. Wherever there is.
There is also a lot of successful people who feel a crippling void in their lives. They can’t express this as this makes them look ungrateful because, again the material is expected to fill them up. Because of my exposure to both types of emptiness and people, I realize a bigger population is so wounded. Because we seek answers and can’t find them, we feel lost. There’s nothing on this earth that can truly fill us up. Both rich and poor, famous and unknown, suffer from this decapitating loneliness and suffering. There’s never a state that is better than the other from my observation and personal experience. The things we think will solve our sorrow or are the cause of our suffering, I don’t think are really the solutions or causes. I can’t claim to know it all but my theory is this:
Maybe we got this whole thing wrong. What life should be like. What if there is no happy ending as such? What if the emptiness we feel is not bad. What if it has its place? What if the space of non clarity is not bad. What if our suffering comes from the judgement we have of the experience. What if emptiness is a compass to remind us how fleeting joy is. How we should grab hold of the small moments that mean so much and what if we just allow that sadness to be there and the hole to exist coz clearly most of us have it. What if we are meant to have it for reflection and direction? Some have it for longer moments than others. Some have managed to temporarily fill that hole with religion until their God lets them down. Some have filled it with ambition, until they reach their goal or never do and feel even emptier either way. Some have filled it with people until the person breaks their heart. Others have used drugs, sex, money to fill the hole until they are all not enough to fill the insatiable hole. The more one succeeds the more susceptible they are to it. The more someone struggles in life the more susceptible they are to emptiness as well. The extremes always cause deeper suffering as the gap is wider. I find myself between both spaces of struggle and understanding and peace. My poem My Face demonstrates that internal suffering and the poem Vacuum expresses that understanding. I think that’s where most of us find ourselves. Most of us can survive if there is a balance of that Yin and Yang but if an imbalance exists, it’s usually very painful and causes suffering. The balance is not found in our circumstances but it’s found in our perception.
I wrote a poem called Vacuum in my book First Thirty (find links below). Vacuum is one of the poems I wrote in a meditative state. I felt the poem wrote itself. The explanation I give to people on what that poem is about is really a toned down and simplified version of what I really meant. I simplify it because I know most will not understand what I meant. The deeper version to the poem Vacuum is this : The poem speaks on how I aliken the infinite space, to God and God being divine creativity, and space being the true essence of who we are. Let me explain and I hope I can explain it well.
Space can also be defined as emptiness or a vacuum, if that space is judged. When judged it becomes a painful place to exist as the judgement states that something is missing and requires answers to complete it, that sometimes our human minds cannot fully comprehend. Otherwise with a neutral mind, any emptiness can be described as space. And the word space means to me, allowing room for infinite possibility and “anythingness” to happen. (I create my own words as we go lol). Space is nothingness and in nothingness we don’t become less but more. We allow, we are free and we simply are, in nothingness. When we have not defined something, it can be anything. This goes with who we are and who we should be. With attachments to our prescribed identities we become trapped in that definition yet our essence itself can never be defined in human terms alone and those definitions trap us, suffocate us as they stop us from evolving and changing. I’m rich, I’m poor, I’m suffering, I’m at peace. Real peace needs no definition or explanation. It’s understood completely when it is felt. Definitions make everything feel certain, predictable, “graspable” and controllable as we fear the unknown and the instability of things we don’t know or understand, so definitions and explanations are our safe space but not necessarily our truest space. Space is a blank canvas, it is somewhere where the unknown exists. The space between 2 objects allows for another object to exist. Scientifically space is filled with so much even when we do not see anything. There’s something in the places that look transparent to us like air and the space in our galaxy. Air has atoms and energy in it. Also scientifically all material things are space or nothingness vibrating at high speed. Essentially we are nothingness in different energy spaces and yet we are scared of when there is “space” in our hearts and gaps in our souls because we expect them to be filled by something meaningful to us. By something that makes sense, something we understand and something we define as “good” for us. Yet our very essence is infinite potential. Infinite potential requires space. So the poem Vacuum states instead of trying to fill that space with the familiar, maybe we should sit in that space and feel it, not fill it, because space is who we really are. So in life, we end up looking for ourselves in things outside of who we are yet we have all we truly need. We were created complete. True infinite inexplicable potential that needs no definition. I don’t know if I’m making any sense and if iv lost you there 😂😂. No side is holier or more grandiose than the other. All life and experience is holy. Maybe wherever we are that leaves us feeling deficient is only there to act as a reminder that all that is on earth is not who we truly are. Maybe it’s an opportunity to remind us how to get back to our true essence. Maybe life is all about finding ourselves no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in. We have put hierarchy in material stuff and circumstances which is a fallacy because even in wealth, some cannot find joy or peace. It’s not about the external but internal. We all have our place in the world but unfortunately it will never be the same or what we expect it to be. So it may be less painful if we judge the experience because either side can give us suffering and either side can give us peace. We can freely change it with less resistance or judgement of where we are because it’s not really about where we are but about who we are.
Wherever we are in life, we can find peace. The sweet spot is finding our own way to that peace. Because if we can find the way, we can continually go back to that path whenever we need to. What if life is just a dance between forgetting our true nature and remembering, in hopes that when it’s all finally over, and everything we deem important falls away, our path to true divinity is easier to find.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WCJQFLW https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/first-30-margaret-chideme/1142036764
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/first-30-1
https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/588050754/First-30-A-Collection-of-a-Woman-s-Poems-about-Love-and-Lust-Pain-and-Abuse-Divorce-Womanhood-Searching-and-Rediscovery
https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798822642164
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Margaret_Chideme_First_30?id=AQAAAECCajYqpM
https://www.storytel.com/se/sv/books/3410457
https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/first-30-a-collection-of-a-womans-poems-about-love-and-lust-pain-and-abuse-divorce-womanhood-searching-and-rediscovery/619942