Rule Of Holes

As I get older my world gets more and more holes in it;

Love holes, hate holes, like and dislike holes,

As people and creatures die and place within my reality

A new hole where their world used to be within me,

And I must learn with each hole a new reality,

But each time of learning may leave the tapestry

Of my reality appearing a little threadbare for a while

As I slowly pick up broken threads

And weave them together again,

But always slightly differently

From the unblemished original.

I knew a man once, he had been a friend,

Who as time passed contradicted this,

Shall we say, ‘Rule of Holes’? 

Yes, that seems right.

When we had been friends, he had normal eyes,

You know, the ones that smile or reach out to you,

Eyes that some folk say are the windows to the soul.

He had been a gentle and kindly person

But as we grew older he developed a view

About how the world around us should be,

And how to make it so, with no rules, just a target;

And in some ways, in truth, I developed another,

(If you are unlucky, there are sometimes

Circumstances in life which require one to choose a side,

No matter how much it goes against the grain.)

But I still lived within the rules as much as possible,

And states of affairs meant we did not see each other,

But after several years, by chance it was, we met again

And by then I had picked up more holes in my reality

And had done my best to change to make my new world,

One hole after another, but he was different.

He had no holes where holes should be

And his reality was unchanged.

His eyes no longer smiled, no longer spoke,

No longer gave access to his soul.

I had come across eyes like that before, so I recognised them.

I call them ‘flat eyes’ and they are the eyes of a person

Who, for whatever reason, has decided not to have holes,

Not to let their world change.  They are target orientated,

And whatever occurs or gets in the way of that

Is removed or destroyed, as necessary,

Without the slightest self-questioning qualm,

And the target remains the same,

Their world unchanged by holes,

But I, thanks be to chance,

Am not like that,

Though there have been

Some times in the past

That I have wished I was,

But now I am more than glad I am not.

Oh yes, and when he died I got a new hole

And wondered if it was not the case,

As with flat eyed people generally,

That he had actually died, in truth,

Long before the physical event

Finalised the situation?

I picked up a hedgehog in the road the other day.

It was in shock and had been mortally injured,

A deep chasm, three centimetres long by one wide.

There was no chance that I or a vet could save it,

And as I turned its curled body in my hands I saw

Ticks upon its stomach, and its fore legs crossed

In front of it, the long toes seeming to reach for something;

It made me think, for some unaccountable reason,

Of the suffering of Jesus Christ, crucified on the cross,

And C.S. Lewis’ book, ‘The Problem With Pain’,

And in that instant I felt fierce love

For that innocent little creature,

And rage against my inability to save it,

And the Mystery for not intervening,

Because I could not - and would not - understand

Why this little creature suffered so,

And I could have put my head back

And howled with anger and pain,

But I did not because that is not my way,

Not with that sort of anger,

Not with that sort of pain.

Part of me knew that some day it would make sense,

But not then.  No! And now there’s a little hedgehog shape

Missing from my jigsaw, and guilt, as I should have

Run it over and taken the pain away but I did not,

I put it in a hedge where it would be safe

To continue suffering until it died!

And I feel immense shame because I bottled it,

And I never have before.  And I don’t know why.

I have never cried when people or creatures have died,

No matter how much I loved them and love them still.

I wish I had but I did not and could not; that is not my way,

And so many have died, taking whole worlds with them,

And leaving holes where I used to put my love for them,

Temporarily leaving my soul like a block of Emmental.

Yes, of course I love them still but it is a different love,

Not a, ‘Hold me tight and make the world go away’ love,

Or a wonderful, wild, laughing until I hurt love.

Oh I know that they are elsewhere and we will meet again,

Maybe in between or maybe in the next life, but I am selfish,

I want them now; I want the world to be as it was,

My world, not theirs.  That’s how selfish I am.

And I don’t want a hole in the place where my,

‘Want you, hold you, love you’ love used to be …

But I accept that there must be -

Indeed recognise I have no choice!

And with time passing there have been more and more

Different holes in my world where people I loved,

Liked, cared for and yes, hated used to be,

And the jigsaw that is my world

Has had more and more bits that were missing;

Some were parts of a serene, cloudless sky,

Some part of a quiet lake,

A snow-capped mountain,

A wrecked Belfast street,

An elegant, quietly weeping cherry tree,

Cascading falls or wild and roiling seas.

We prefer knowing a thing to learning a thing.

Knowing requires no effort but learning does,

And can make us very uncomfortable,

And challenge things that we thought we knew;

And I know people die and it is part of a purpose,

And I know that there is pain, and that too must be

Purposeful I suppose, character building! –

Aeschylus said, “He who learns must suffer!” -

Because I believe some Mystery oversees it all,

But does not interfere, allowing us, as with children,

To learn through pleasure and pain – tough love -

And then, like an ultimate emergency service,

Rescues us through death, to go wherever it is we go,

Where we lick our wounds, meet old friends and family,

Reflect, gather new perspectives and then get back

Into the wild and wonderful hurly-burly that is life.

I know this but, as each person dies and leaves a hole,

A cold emptiness in my reality, I have to learn a new world

To fill that aching void, and it makes me ‘uncomfortable’,

And sometimes I still think there must be a better way

To learn and progress than through pain and through death,

And I must force myself to remember the great truth,

And trust that it will all make sense, and that there are more

Miracles in life; life itself, with shouting, affirming births,

And extraordinary joys and pleasures in the world,

Which push the balance back firmly into positive territory

And build whole new, affirmative worlds inside me.

But still there have been and are times when I wish I could cry.

I wish I could put my head back and roar my rage and anguish;

Wish I could let it out, give it full and truly violent expression,

But somewhere deep within me, beyond any doubt, I know,

In the grand scheme of things, in an incomprehensible truth,

That it would be a denial and betrayal of my ever changing,

And more often than not, glorious, love filled reality and

To paraphrase Leibniz, as opposed to Candide’s Pangloss,

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

So I must colour in the spaces in the jigsaw as best I can,

And watch as it changes, always changes, and obliges me

To learn more, and know less, to love more and hate less,

And find acceptance that reality originates

In a profound understanding and trust

Which make acceptable being a seeker,

That raging at senseless pain

And cruel injustice is okay –

Indeed it is absolutely necessary! -

But that someday, some life, it will make sense

That as Lewis said, ‘You don’t have a Soul. 

You are a Soul. You have a body.’

And until I live that ultimate truth,

I will dwell in a painful and wonderful

Safe and dangerous rainbow mist

Of Unknowing,

Of Hope

And of Love.