Within and Without

Within each one of us there is a dark chasm, a well of emptiness, a hunger that cannot be sated....

Is it not so?  Furthermore, is it not true that we must strive to fill that hole?  Who can bear to remain still with this emptiness within?  Not I.  Nor few others certainly, especially since many even seem to succeed in filling it, if only for a little while, as they fight the darkness, staving it off with pleasure or entertainment.

Yet nothing ever fills it wholly and therefore nothing ever sates.  We must always have more.  So we go on and on, stuffing in the next good or perceived good and then the next and so on in a continuous stream, striving with all our might to ensure that vacant space has something in it.  We go on, even when we know that nothing will ever satisfy.

An artist cannot do the same.

I do not mean by this statement a literal truth that an artist is unable to stuff perceived goods in to fill this hole; indeed, we are all too ready to try—perhaps even the first to do so.  I mean, more accurately, that an artist MUST NOT.

Rather we artists must point out to others that the hole is there, that we all share this emptiness within, that in this suffering there is yet good.  For if we do not, then who will?

I can look at the world about me and see suffering: then pain rises up within me that I can do nothing.  There are all those hungry, thirsty, worn down by overwork and disease, the sick, the dying, and worst of all the hopeless, the empty, the abandoned....  What can I do?

Then I look at all the greatness of human development and I wonder why we do not set our sights higher.  Why do we not aim for life rather than for death?

For death it is that we move towards often enough, even if that is not the goal for which we strive.  It only takes a look around to see the fruit of this unintended end.  For instance, snorkeling around Kauai shows dying coral and fewer fish as unknown quantities of pesticides poured upon GMO crops leak into the ocean and destroy the ecosystem.  Another example breaking upon the news of late: the tearing apart and selling of body parts from pre-born babies, a so-called business carried out since the 1980s.  And there are many more cases.

As I brood on these things, my heart cries out: why?  Why must this be?

These and other tragedies come from some reason surely—from some perceived good.  It must be that people think only of the gain and not the cost, the profit and not the person, the money earned and not the life lost....

What am I to do with this world?

I can hide in my room, or within the safe bounds of the life I have set out for myself.  I can pretend these evils do not exist, choosing instead to stuff the hole in my face with chocolate and set my mind upon old literature, traveling mentally back to days gone by, and so on.  Oh, how easily I can do this!  How easily I can lean back on my selfishness and pretend to care for none but myself.

Yet even more than one who wants to escape the evils of the world I see about me—even more than one who wants desperately to pretend that there shall be a happy ending within my lifetime—even more than that, I want to add my small part to that which cries out for the truth.  I want my voice to resound through the world—or at least my neighborhood—to say that truth is real, that goodness is real, that beauty is real.  I want people to believe in love, in sacrifice, in the common good.

Sometimes I believe that someone might actually hear my voice and have a change of heart.  More often, though, I believe that no one truly cares about another, that no one would even think of giving up some small convenience for the good of another, let alone a complete sacrifice of one's entire life for others.

Yet, as an artist, I must have hope.  I must speak that hope into the vast chasm between me and the next person.  And I will keep saying with the words of a character known as the Poet: "This is good, but something is better...."

So it is that my hope rises up beyond my cynicism.  It blooms like the tiniest of flowers, waiting to be trampled underfoot or crushed by the cold ice and snow of winter if the sun come not in time.  I want to hope, but I do not want my hopes to be dashed.  So it is that my questions remain:

Am I wrong to even hope that someone, somewhere, might want to hear my thoughts resounding across that great chasm between us?

Am I wrong to believe that if we unite we can change the world, one small step at a time?

Am I wrong to even believe in hope itself?