Blank
Blank
By Jerome Francis Holt
He was filled with ideas, they permeated his brain. Upon waking in the morning, his mind would tell him about all the things he had to do, the people he should be like and the things he was missing which would of course make him happy. Lying in bed he would check his social media accounts, which would make him him feel even more lacking in his life, the lack of adventure, the lack of friends, the lack of lifestyle, the lack of a girlfriend, the lack of a job - on and on the mind would remind him of all the things he didn’t have which would make him happy.
After the mental barrage of reminders to his own inadequacy, he wearily got out of bed and into the morning routine of drinking tea, visiting the bathroom and eating breakfast - all with that familiar morning feeling that he was missing something in his life, unable to reach that space were peace existed. It was as if he was walking through fog, blind to what was ahead but hoping to find the peace space where everything feels good, yet he couldn’t seem to get there, forever waving his hands in the fog looking for something to hold onto, while his mind was constantly reminding him that in order to feel peace he needed to start doing stuff even though he couldn’t see a bloody thing.
The acts of doing never seemed to get him there, to that place of waking up and feeling grateful, clear, and content with being alive. His mind was constantly spinning him stories, it was running his life and despite knowing this he kept taking the bait.
Slowly he made steps to change, change the way he felt, change the way he thought. Yet, everyday he would wake up with that familiar feeling of mind control, the mind had control of his emotions, telling him how to feel, making him work towards the minds’ goals in order to satisfy the thoughts that he lacked so much in his life. No matter how many times he tried to fill and accomplish his minds requests, he never seemed to get there, to the peace space. Although, through the process, he did notice a shift start to take place within him.
He started to challenge his ideas. Like a grocery checklist he went from one idea to another, checking off each item, each idea, as he challenged their substance. At first his mind told him ‘Europe would be a better place to live’, so he went to Europe and despite numerous benefits he noticed many similarities to where he was currently living.
Again, the mind fooled him into thinking there were people who were different than most of the people he was meeting, people who cared, who got him and were interested in him, who understood him and if he could just meet them, he would have a much more fulfilled life. Yet, everywhere he went, people seemed to be the same, with similar traits and basically with the same level of consciousness. Whether he thought of himself as being better than the rest, this was an idea he also needed to challenge. However, there was not one person on all his travels that really stood out. Not one person who spoke to him in a way that made him feel understood, made him feel human. The idea that there was a group of special people in which he would belong and feel whole, he couldn’t find it, maybe he wasn’t looking hard enough or in the right places, or maybe it was just a concept and these people who were special and who would get just him didn’t exist. Either way it was a concept that sure kept him busy, wondering, trying and chasing his own tail, never really seeing people for who they were, more who he wanted them to be, dreaming of some unattainable fantasy, a place of completeness that he may or may not ever reach.
His mind told him ‘meet a special lady, that will make the difference’ and of course like most men, this thought was on constant repeat. Having being single for so long, maybe even if he was with a special someone, he would still be thinking there was another special better someone out there, tailored just for him.
He tried to meet women wherever he went but he slowly discovered that his ideas of relationships with women were interwoven into his animalistic instincts, confusing him to think that it was a necessity to have a girlfriend and without one he would be without peace. He noticed that although he may long for female companionship, it wasn’t necessarily a need, one which rendered him with the inability to feel complete. Due to the very nature of working with another human being, which is fraught with challenges, he was naive to expect that another human being, albeit a woman, would bring him true happiness. Especially since he was expecting this to happen almost instantly upon meeting a woman he was attracted to or at least he thought he was attracted to.
This idea probably came from watching too many hollywood movies, which condense our love lives into hour long romances, often with the theme that love for another human is the greatest love a person can feel, and when the movie is ending the two lovers are shown to come together and live happily every after. So far, just getting started in this love life affair seems difficult enough, let alone the whole happily ever after thing!
Numerous people would comment that he would be happier if he wasn’t single, asking ‘don’t you feel lonely?’ Sure he felt lonely, but it wasn’t the kind of lonely they may be thinking about, it was a kind of lonely hole which he wanted to fill. Sometimes the hole was the idea that he needed a women, sometimes a job, sometimes kids, sometimes that he should be living somewhere else. It was replaceable, different ideas could be used to fill the lonely hole. Whether money, fame or power, it all leads to the same place. It all leads to that desire to feel whole in life.
Over time he began to realize his ideas on fulfillment were not even his own. In fact when you start to look at it, most ideas we hold have been drilled into us since an early age. How much do we know to be true from our own experience and understanding? Ideas need to be challenged, and depending on who you are, you might have a very very long grocery list of ideas that need challenging.
Years passed, he would test and sometimes have to re-test the ideas on his grocery list and amazingly many of them were vanquished in the process. He was lucky in one sense that he got to challenge his own ideas and with time he started to feel calmer, clearer and more centered. He still dealt with his mind trying to get him to think about things he needed in order to be happier, this was a daily battle. At the same time he noticed he was finding it easier to exist in the moment, enjoy the moment. He didn’t always have a nagging monkey on his shoulder telling him he needed to do something other than what he was doing at that moment in time. There was a distance starting to grow between him and his ideas.
Life was happening and for awhile he forgot that he was even going through the process of idea challenging. Then one day, awaking from another sleep, he felt incredibly simple. Looking out the bedroom window he observed the view in front of him, nothing else came into his mind. Downstairs while making his tea, he made his tea, nothing else. He knew he had tasks to do, the agenda of the day, yet he didn’t feel the usual nagging thoughts in his head, the reminders of what he was missing in his life. This feeling of blankness, nothingness, serenity, simplicity, a sense that nothing was going on, didn’t last long, but long enough to make him wonder - was this feeling of nothingness, the feeling of emptiness, a good one? It certainly felt nice.
The experience pushed him to persevere, to continue challenging his ideas. If an idea would come in to his mind, whether his or someone else’s, he would do his darnest to not let the idea infect him, challenging it, and adding it to his grocery list. Some ideas needed constant assessment, as you probably have already noticed, women seemed to cause him a lot of anguish. He would go weeks without feeling that he was missing something because he didn’t have a women in his life, and then a beautiful women would walk past him in the street, give him a smile and maybe say a few words and his whole world would come crumbling in, as his mind went into overdrive telling him, that particular women he had just met was the one for him, the one who would make him happy! He knew this was all an idea, and with each women, with each interaction, he had to grow, he had to evolve. It felt miserable at times, the high and the lows of meeting women, whether in the street, a coffee shop or some community gathering - it was never ending, with so many beautiful women, he could never seem to develop any intimate relationship with most of them, let alone find one that wanted to be with him.
Finding himself disappointed after each interaction it was a constant rollercoaster of temptation and desire, of possibility and disappointment. He knew he was bigger than this, bigger than being controlled by his mind in this way, there was more to experience in life than not experiencing in life, if you get my meaning. There is more to life than being disappointed you are not experiencing something, like you’re not experiencing loving a women or being loved by a women.
Then, one particular day, he awoke with a completely blank mind. He knew who he was but his mind offered him absolutely nothing. No desires, no reminding him of his failures and all the things he lacked which would make him happy. He tried to force his brain down familiar roads, to think about his future plans or lack of plans and to consider where he should live next, but nothing came back, nothing was happening. The cogs weren’t turning, there was no judgment to the fact that he wasn’t thinking about the stuff he normally thinks about. He felt at peace with the world, whatever would come that day he would enjoy. Enjoy the morning, enjoy his breakfast, enjoy the people he met, enjoy his own space. Enjoy. He knew he would have to make some plans, deal with the game of life, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, do - but at the same time, in that moment, he felt wonderfully, peacefully, blank.
He wondered if the feeling of peace, was a feeling of nothingness? If it was, then nothing was wonderful. Nothing to bother you, nothing telling you you’re not good enough, you’re not like the perfect people living the perfectly full adventurous lives which you should emulate, nothing to remind you of how little you do in comparison to everyone else, nothing holding you against the perfect ever changing image of yourself which you happen to try to achieve but never seem to get there, and nothing to attach yourself too. Just you, with your own agenda and hopefully an agenda to experience life, in it’s most simplistic and beautiful form. Nothingness then, did in a sense equal the possibility to experience life in a beautiful clear way, you are not full of ideas holding you back. With a blank mind you have blank slate, you can look at things head on without the nattering of the mind. Nothingness equals a form of serenity. Nothingness is an opportunity.
Feeling blank isn’t a bad thing, like an artists canvass ready for the next great work. Having a blank canvas means there is a possibility, a possibility to feel and experience life simply, to draw on the blank canvass whatever the artist wishes.
Feeling blank in the morning, when he awoke, was one of the most beautiful experiences of his life. He looked up the word in the dictionary, ‘blank’ - a space left to be filled. After years of de-programming his mind and challenged his ideas, there he was, blank, available, left with space to be filled with his choices, his ideas, and his life.
The distractions, of course, are constant, the ideas infiltrating his mind from inside and out, but armed with the knowledge that he could feel blank, feel nothing and it be wonderful, he went about his life with a new vigor and with the knowledge that the peace space wasn’t far away. As long as he continued to challenge his ideas, to create space between himself and his ideas, he would be alright and maybe, just maybe, waking up in the morning and feeling nothing, feeling blank, could be the doorway and the start of experiencing life to the fullest, to be in peace with life.