Inspiration for difficult times
I am really grateful for coming across this poem that resonated so much with me – thanks to Alane Freund for sharing it on Facebook! I felt it was the perfect inspiration for anyone who struggles in the world right now. This could be specially helpful, if you are highly sensitive person, so you feel much more about all that is wrong with the world right now. The poem encourages you to make your struggles worthwhile by speaking up about all the ways the world is hurting you. This way your hurt can become your best guide towards the contribution you can make to the world simply by speaking your truth. I believe that the world is really needing you right now, so see, if this poem inspires you in some way…
You-Shaped Hole
Sometimes the world feels inhospitable.
You feel all the ways that you and it don’t fit.
You see what’s missing, how it all could be different.You feel as if you weren’t meant for the world, or the world wasn’t meant for you,
as if the world is “the way it is” and your discomfort with it a problem.So you get timid. You get quiet about what you see.
But what if this?
What if you are meant
to feel the world is inhospitable, unfriendly, off-track
in just the particular ways that you do?The world has a you-shaped hole in it.
It is missing what you see.
It lacks what you know
and so you were called into being.
To see the gap, to feel the pain of it, and to fill it.Filling it is speaking what is missing.
Filling it is stepping into the center of the crowd, into a clearing,
and saying, here, my friends, is the future.You don’t have to do it all, but you do have to speak it.
You have to tell your slice of the truth.
You do have to walk toward it with your choices, with your own being.Then allies and energies will come to you like fireflies swirling around a light.
The roughness of the world, the off-track-ness, the folly that you see,
these are the most precious gifts you will receive in this lifetime.They are not here to distance you from the world,
but to guide you to your contribution to it.The world was made with a you-shaped hole in it.
In that way you are important.
In that way you are here to make the world.
In that way you are called.
Thank you for the poem, the lovely thought, the encouragement. However, it will remain ever something that many of us just cannot, or will not do – “you do have to speak it” – simply because we have spoken up, said something, done something, and were ruthlessly, and sometimes maliciously put down, trampled, silenced, vilified, ostracised for it. I’m sorry, but, despite the lovely thought, enough does become enough, and we just have to accept, in the end, that the world is the way the world is, and I don’t belong in it.
Hi Stephanie,
I understand that it can be at times more appealing to accept the discord than feeling some kind of pressure that you ought to fight it. Perhaps the poem and myself are sharing a preference to feel that there is something we can do about what hurts us, so that we can have an active response and retain hope for something better. And I like that the suffering can bring purpose and meaning that way too. Who knows, it could be wiser though to learn to accept what is and save your energy from fruitless struggles… or maybe there is room for both way of responding, depending on the circumstances. I am hoping though that even if you are accepting the world being as is, you can still find some environments in it where you can feel that you belong!