The Empty Cup

Here I sit, nearly half way through the year, with dangerously little to show for it. My personal projects have all stopped and started in too close a succession to have anything to show for themselves. I find myself wandering, both physically and metaphorically from purpose to purpose, seeking meaning where it is not to be found.

My mind teems with ideas and thoughts, projects yet undone rap at the entrance to my attention unceasingly yet they all ring hollow, mere phantoms which, finding themselves unattended, rise up to haunt me in the months and years that follow their birth. When time admits I make my way into the world and sometimes, for the briefest second, I can capture something of potential. Something that speaks to me months or years later. But like a wisp of smoke on a spring breeze, the inspiration is too soon scattered and inchoate.

I know this feeling. It is the vast echoing emptiness of life. The clatter of a thousand useless journeys without purpose or destination reverberate through the impossible labyrinth of my soul. The hobnail boot of despair click-clacks along the long marble hall ticking off the seconds until death finds us all finally at rest. Potential spent. Burden lifted. Debts paid.

Some say that the ancients built God from the lightning, the rain, the mountains, the epic and unspeakable, those things so far beyond our comprehension. I disagree. God was found in quiet, plodding hours of solitude. God does not live on the mountaintop; he lives in the silent despair of the empty cup.