THE HOLE OF LONELINESS

[Pravin Kumar]

The Hole of Loneliness:

When the mind settles the need to reach for something lessens. In the process the hole of loneliness disappears and it’s simply because an “I” story of a hole isn’t being created...

The hole of loneliness seems to get wider as one ages, but it doesn’t really, what happens is there are just less distractions so “I” takes more of a hold. The natural process of life seems to be to stay busy trying to figure things out and regardless of what exactly the figuring out manifest as, it certainly creates a lot of distractions. There are periods in between the busyness where a person has some idle time and probably feels the hole of loneliness, but it doesn’t usually last very long because the busyness of trying to figure out life returns. This busyness last most of one’s life, but there does come a time that the natural process of being busy lessens. At this stage many people experience a loneliness that hasn’t been noticed before so it will either be addressed by looking inward or one will get busy again trying to figure out how to fill the hole.

Eventually the busyness will end for whatever reason, but unfortunately for most people without the busyness the hole of loneliness rears its ugly head. Many elderly people struggle to fill this hole, but it’s so difficult because there just isn’t a lot going on. Kids are grown, retirement, house paid off, more time behind you than what’s left, and the list goes on. I was this way for many years, using distraction after distraction. There were very brief periods of not needing to reach, but these periods were far a few in between. That is until ten years ago when I hit an emotional bottom. I began sitting and simply looking inward which allowed me to see the distractions of my “I” needing to attach to a story. As I sat the mind settled and thus the “I” needing to reach for something lessened. In the process the hole of loneliness disappeared and it was simply because an “I” story of a hole was not being created...

MICHAEL CUPO