The Holes In Our Hearts

 

It's only in the empty spaces that we can grow. 

Just about two years ago, when the last of my two grandfathers (pictured here with my grandmother) passed away, I remember thinking about emptiness more than I ever had before. Having your own emptiness is easier, I realized, than watching someone else suffer from emptiness, from a deep and transformative loss. 

There's this place of pain in between change and growth, and it's truly a force to be reckoned with. We can (and beautifully do) offer support to those who are hurting in the form of hugs, well wishes, laughter, kind words, and perhaps a cake -- and these actions are vital. They carry us when we can't carry ourselves. They keep us alive when we think we can't go on. But the only true healer is time. It's really only in the empty space, in the span of time where pain grows abundantly, that we can find ourselves again.

I look deeply at this photograph of my grandparents in 1955, and I suddenly remember why photography is so important to me. Good photographs are good because of the emptiness they contain. The best photos leave you asking dozens of questions but also manage to satisfy you and tell you a important story. They fill in an empty space while they create an empty space, which feels to be the perfect system, and the perfect representation of how we tend to live our lives. Empty? Fill. Fill? Empty. It's engrained, but I love the idea of trying to ditch that system, at least for a little while. So I'm trying to be patient, trying to figure out how to be less urgent in my intentions, less urgent in my desire to fill everything that feels so empty.

And so, as 2014 begins, I am trying to embrace emptiness: more spaces between glasses and mugs in the cabinets, a shelf with nothing on it, fewer shoes, an empty breadbox, time in which my body isn't moving frantically in order to get from point A to point B. Fewer things, more time, more air for breathing. The things we've lost, both willingly and unwillingly, are gone perhaps so that we can live more deeply and purposefully. Having things and being full make us feel good, but our real truths can only be seen when we have less. Crisis strikes or emptiness fills us and then, suddenly, the world can see who we actually are. When we have fewer things, cleaner slates, and emptier hearts, we are our real selves, and only then can we begin to truly understand the true depths of happiness and the possibilities of the human heart.   

I wish you a very happy and purposeful 2014, my dear readers. Take your time, honor emptiness, and live as big of a life as you can. And may you be patient with the holes in your hearts this year. You do, truly, deserve it.

The note that accompanied the photograph of my grandparents: a friend or relative had come across the photo and mailed it to them decades later. (And, yes, steak! Also, for some amazing reason, Hershey's Syrup.)