Run Dry

Feelings don't often run dry.  At times, I feel like I have come up empty after so many trials, after so many times going through the same thing.  Over and over again, I am pushed past the brink of what I can deal with to what I feel is the point of running dry, void of anything left.

But you can't really empty a feeling as long as memory resides.  My mind is often a steel trap of feelings, emotions and experiences.  A lifetime of happiness sometimes is replaced by one bad instance, one bad experience or a tough trial.  I can tell you that after spending what is approaching a quarter life of trial, I feel that I have run dry.

But really I haven't.  For some reason, I still run like that old car that shouldn't be able to still get around.  I remember hearing the advice of elders that I ignored in my youth that is becoming true wisdom.  I couldn't fathom nor did I relate to the suffering of others.  I did however wonder how a person could keep running for so long when the only reward was a life of more suffering.

The realization then came to me that a life of suffering is better than a life of oblivion.  Suffering is something that is defining me less each day.  Sure it is something that I deal with on a daily basis.  It is something that I can't personally glaze over.  But I can say that there is more to life even when I feel like I've run dry.  There is an dwindling emptiness that is being filled.

It isn't being filled by another person but it is being filled by having a purpose.  It is filled by having a hope that I will be able to help others that share this same path of suffering.  I want to help others get past the yolk of suffering and find the freedom to live life.  It isn't because I find some egotistical fulfillment in this.  It would be much easier to focus only on my struggles in my own fulfillment.  But I feel like I can't have gone through all of this, I can't keep going through all this without realizing that my life is being tugged by what connects us all.  That feeling that an unseen force is tugging me towards others like me.  Every time I stray from this path, I am painfully reminded of what my purpose in this life is.

Even when I feel like I am empty, when I feel like I have run dry in my soul, there is something that pulls me back to where this place of balance is.  Not a place of suffering and self loathing.  But to a place of solace.  A happiness that is hard to explain.  A life that I can't explain that makes sense to me.  Sure I struggle against the tide of life.  I am very human to a painful degree.  But when I feel that I am empty and I cannot go any further, I feel the light of others that haven't given in, haven't given up.  So it isn't me powering this engine of hope, it is the power of others.  It is the binding that we all share.  Never ignore that tugging you feel to help others.  Because one day, it may be what sustains you and keeps you going.