Shelter in Place

     “Once you learn to appreciate emptiness as a positive theme in daily life, you may become a different sort of person. You may not be so anxious when losses come. You make yourself busy just to avoid facing your fate and your emotions. Busyness may be a way of avoiding real work…         

     Now when people meet you, they see the emptiness in your relaxed manner and in your absence of anxiety. You may look healthier and more approachable. You have empty spaces in you where people can enter. They won’t feel as though they are disturbing you or interrupting your perpetual activity.”

     It is obvious that author and therapist Thomas Moore’s view of emptiness is optimistic. He posits that it means having room in our lives, room for others to engage our time and attention, and he implies that it is also about having room for ourselves, space to embrace our thoughts and feelings – be they pleasant or painful.

     Until recently I regarded emptiness pessimistically, as in the glass is half empty. I deemed it a state of being that needed to be filled, filled with work and people, sights, and sounds. Emptiness was a void, a vacuum, and I thought that like nature, human nature abhors a vacuum. Having come to some semblance of wisdom through the years, I now recognize the importance of befriending emptiness, for without doing so we become participants in a race in which we are always trying to outrun ourselves, always striving to get to the elusive finish line of fullness.

    When Moore states that “busyness may be a way of avoiding real work” he means that our “perpetual activity” can serve to put us at a distance from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that need to be faced and felt. It is only when we find a safe haven in emptiness that we can leave anxiety behind, and become a welcoming presence for others. Understanding emptiness as a place to hunker down within, gives new meaning to the phrase “shelter in place” not as a strategy for self-protection, but as a form of hospitality.