PART 2 - Moving my pain to Meaningful Purpose

MAY 2010

Part 2
EMPTY.

Empty has a certain ring to it. It means something used to be full, and it got emptied out. Empty might imply a kind of satisfaction, because it once got filled, and then the process of empting out once again implies a filling up. The cycles of nature that so visually reflects our cycles of life, comes to mind.
BUT……
How does empty feel, when it was never full? That god-dammit biological instinct to nurture and give life, is called empty when you go for your spa-day on Christmas-eve to anesthetize the haunts of hearing happy children’s voices preparing cookies and milk for the arrival of Father Christmas.

Empty is virtual, when visiting my granny at the old-age home and dreading to pass that dark passage with a portrait hanging at the end of it, that dates from somewhere in the 70’s and smells like stale lavender and moth-balls, to get to her sun-lit room with a view that smells of roses and freshly brewed coffee and home-made rusks. Thinking to myself, my granny has got it good, because she has a grand-daughter like me and a daughter like my mom, who will never allow stale lavender and mothballs when her olfactory nerve looses its sensitivity due to old age. WE will be the ones to give the roses fresh water in its vase and place new photo-collages of the family on the wall, when she gets too old to do it herself. My overture sounds grim, because emptiness is a dark passage, and not knowing who will change the water in the rose-vase or care that the picture on the wall, that dates from over 3 decades ago, cannot be noticed by my blinded eyes.

So, in the larger scheme of things, having all the freedom to do as you want to, with no obligation and responsibility to raising a next generation for the sake of man-kind and my human need, becomes a personal dilemma. This was a personal crisis with, seemingly, no solutions, which has haunted me from the day that I felt my age counting against me. My hour-glass with the last bits of sand trickling towards the narrow centre, forced me to scram around for meaning, hope and finally some sort of a solution. Not just an alternative to hope lost, but brand new spectacles. A desire to pro-create, as biological as it sounds, caused me to analyze, as good as I am with it, to come to the core of my desire. I have peeled away several layers, and given MY truth a brand new jacket to wear.

As the song goes:
"And though I might not know the answers
I can finally say I'm free
And if the questions lead me here, then
I am who I was born to be"

Sometimes our desires for something as simple as wanting to have the privilege of holding your own new-born baby in your arms is not as simple as desiring a new car, double story house and impressive career. Those things one can have anyway, because you can make it happen at the cost of a few sacrifices. A family on the other hand, you cannot manufacture. It is a gift, given by grace.

I think I might have managed to unwrap my desire to nurture and love, and managed to give it a new packaging and content.

Part 3
PUTTING IT OUT THERE
and imparting my solution, my new hope and my gift that I believe will take me to the next fase of my life.