Recently an extended family member shared a reflection on one of her relatives who we both love and know differently. She said “something is missing inside him.” How true is that reflection of all of us who have felt that something inside of us is missing somehow. It seems especially true for empaths, artists and sensitives (one could say they are all of these) and how it is that in the intensity of the human experience, we feel separate from that essence of belonging to ourselves and to all that some consider ephemeral, other worldly or just plain “unreal.”
In that state of separateness, we lose connection with what is eternally us - that which lives within us and cannot be found “out there” even though people spend their lives searching for it in every place and person other than in themselves - their inner divinity. The person mentioned who has “something missing inside” sought and seeks to create beautiful other things that come from within him yet he searches for outside of himself. Many are those things and people…eventually to be left on the side of the road, “kicked to the curb” when they are “discovered” to be lacking the connection, spark, beauty, peace and love that he craved but has failed to embrace within himself therefore he cannot find it in anything outside of him. He and any and all of you are not alone in this experience of wanting and seeking “out there” what lives inside you always. I felt it most intensely in this man whose unmet parts were faced with my unmet parts in a perfect mirror. I do think I was in need of the painful awakening I received in meeting the unmet parts in this other person…Even in the connecting there was an intense shakiness and fragility - like I was always about to fall off a cliff into the abyss of annihilation and nothingness - which to me felt worse than the slow pricking pain of being unmet, in all the ways people abjure and diminish those they have drawn into their lives, when the emptiness wakes them up and puts them to sleep all at the same time. That was him and that was me.
Even so, people are always communicating with us, even in their absence. You are only to listen in to yourself and you will find them and they will speak to you and you to them. You are in essence them, and they are you and anytime we think it…we are and they are.
To meet my unmet parts, I first needed to befriend them and be curious to know them. Next came compassion, suffering with them…the true definition of compassion means “to suffer with.” Oh and that word suffer is an experience or feeling that many people run like crazy from. Industries thrive on relieving people from their suffering, be it the media, cosmetics, diets, foods and drugs…”Buy me”…”Sup with me”…”I will take away all your suffering?” Even the offerings that are elated like music have their dark underbellies for so many. Some will choose to martyr themselves in their suffering and yet it's all “blah, blah” - talk and rhetoric so they can seem to dive into it, but really they stand outside of it, jeering and mocking it so they don’t have to move through it. “No thanks, I’ll bypass it.”…”No thanks, I’ll drown in it.” The fear of swimming through it keeps many people from traversing the waters of their “suffering” and coming to a place of rest within and without. Yes, something’s missing…I have felt that. I sit here writing about it, and reflect on where I am in the deep swim through it.
In speaking with this family member, I shared with her that of all things in my life right now, I aspire to be kind…kindness, compassion, humility, and gratitude toward myself and others. I have found in times of feeling disconnected, that it is in temperance that I give to others; these things that I work on daily giving to myself and being in myself. I remind myself that if I wish to be these, I must give them away: “the only way to keep it, is to give it away” - a reference to how one stays on the path to recovery. I am continually working on recovery and must need a whole lot of it because I have found myself time and again involved with people who “have something missing inside.” Though the truth is I own my own “missingness” and seek to meet it and heal it in seeing the beauty, grace, and love in those I have called in who are “missing something inside.” To myself and all those who have “something missing inside”, I want to say, you are amazing, gorgeous, gifted, and lovable beings and I am honored to know you, love you, and to cross paths with you in this timeless existence spread out over eons of joy and amazement. I hear your music and celebrate it! I sing to you and feel your embrace! I love you always…to the many moons and back again!