The Element of Emptiness

Last night I wandered out of my body and took refuge in my astral sphere once again. I rested by the shores of the great ocean and watched several sunsets. It must have been a while, since I watched my whole life pass me by, multiple times.

Just when I was heading back to my physical world, I saw her stepping into the sunlight. I called out her name aloud but she didn’t respond. I waved frantically at her and caught her attention. She smiled and waved at me from a distance. I kept looking at her mesmerized, held back in time and in a certain life and smitten by her timeless, eternal charm.

She floated across and came over to talk to me.

“You didn’t respond to your name?” I blurted, rather abruptly.

“You are a visitor here, but people who belong here no longer need a name. We are who we are, unbridled and free from all chains and obligations.” She replied.

“So what should I call you, then? Should I give you another name?” I asked.

She looked at me and smiled. “What would you like to call me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Do you have a preference?” I asked again.

“I have been given names by other people before, depending on how they were related to me. I have been called a few names in every life span. There have been spiritual names and nick names, abuses and adjectives. I have had a few pseudo-names and alter-egos. There have been names that were special and held a meaning, there were others which never mattered.” She took a pause and looked at me again.

“You tell me, what would you like to call me?” she waited a moment before asking me again. “What do you think I represent in your life?”

It was a strange question and actually something that I had never given a thought before. All my life, I was this young boy riding a bicycle, wading through the traffic and chasing a dream. I had slept through most part of my formative years and was woken up with a jolt and a sudden realization of desperation and craving that I had never had before in a long, long time. Life had just abandoned me at a busy crossroad and had come back years later to fetch what was left of me. I had broken most of my bones by then and fractured my motivation and ambition and lost my will to make anything of me.

I waited, thought about it and then it hit me. I replied, “You represent a longing, a vast emptiness that once I realized, that it exists, I could never go back.

I waited for her to say something but she just kept looking at me.

I continued.

“This is a void that I can never fill up, even if I used everything that this life blessed me with - my career, family, kids, whatever goodwill I earned, even my faith and religion. This emptiness is a blank canvas that sucks every shade I throw at it and still remains blank. This is the kind of vacuum that can spoon someone hollow and then you are no longer alive, even if you are not dead.”

I looked right into her eyes before adding “You are an undying thirst; a hunger that will never be satiated. I can never have enough of you. I can know you an entire lifetime and not know you at all. I can own every single atom of your being and yet find it difficult to gather my voice to call out your name.”

“So I am just an unfulfilled desire and nothing more, is it?”She questioned.

“Yes, and No” I replied. “Yes, because I do see you as someone I can no longer have, and No, because I don’t think that this longing for you will ever die. Even if I had you all for myself, I would have continued on this path of endless craving and indulged myself in finding ways to have more and more of you." "I think, I need this emptiness inside me to feel complete, maybe like the air inside a bag of chips to keep them from being crushed. This barren void inside me, is my safety net that pushes me forward, keeps me thinking and perhaps prevents my mental breakdown. Maybe the day, this void fills up I will have no purpose left. Maybe it is my quest that keeps my heart pumping and this perennial ache that keeps my blood flowing.”

At this point, I got close and held her hand. “How broken must I be to need an endless yearning to feel complete?”

She wrapped my hand in her hands and a tear trickled down her eye and broke at her lips. “Aren’t we all broken, somehow or the other?” she asked.

“Yes, perhaps we are.” I said. “But I am not sorry about it, at least not anymore, for I now see the joy in this pain. The blanketing comfort of sadness, is the part that is most beautiful and perhaps most underrated in our lives. It is like when people come together and bond during a funeral.”

“Yes, I understand.” she said.

“No, you don’t”. A wry smile crossed my lips. “You can’t understand it, because in this realm, you are not broken. Only, I am. I am the cracked, dysfunctional bowl that can’t be filled anymore. I am the one living an illusion and chasing a lie, carrying a wound that will never heal. Sugar coat and blend it with whatever sweetness the heavens allow you, it will always be the same, stark naked  truth that when I claim a part of you, I stand to lose the rest of you – forever. Maybe we were never destined to meet. Maybe we will always be together, living long enough to tell our tale between the curtains of light and shadows, who can tell?”

I exhausted my words at this point and sat down.

She came around and put a hand on my shoulder and said, “we are all broken, much like the pieces of a jigsaw in this whole universe. It takes millions of lifetimes to match the pieces that fit together and feel complete and even then there are corners and edges of us that seek other pieces and then those pieces in turn seek other parts. If the universe is a bowl that holds all of us together, then in some unknown plane, we all already exist as one big seamless, melodious ensemble. But here, this search never ends, the whole picture can never be seen – at least not in the dimension we live in.”

I nodded in agreement and got up to go. “I guess I will go now. We are tied to our posts. No matter what you say, it will never fill this void. But, I am OK with it now. This void is part of me too, much like everything else that is me. The element of emptiness is an integral constituent of my soul, you see.”

I finally stood up, looked at her and ran my fingers through her hair, holding her face in my palms momentarily. “I will miss you.” I said.

“Well, miss me then.” She replied before turning around and moving away but stopped after going some distance, turned back again and asked me. “So, what name will you use to call me now?”

“Trishna”, I replied and smiled and then added “it means the thirst, befitting you see, but maybe I will just call you ‘T’. Works?”

“So, ‘T’ it is then.” she smiled, turned again and went out of my sight and I too, returned to my existence.