Finding Fulfillment: Filling the Empty Spaces

From time to time, we all experience feelings of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, a lack of fulfillment. There may be a very good reason for that unhappiness—the loss of a loved one or other disaster. Maybe we’re feeling a lack of purpose. Or perhaps we don’t exactly know what we want, but sense that something is missing. We need something new to come into our lives to feel purpose again, to feel joy.

Let me make a rather “out there” declaration. That when we are terribly unhappy, whether it due to a deep-seated sorrow, or a vague sense of being unfulfilled—the forces that be seem to work together to present to you what you are lacking. To satisfy that deep wanting.

This is huge. So let me repeat that statement. The forces that be seem to work together to present to you what you are lacking. To bring you joy and satisfy your deepest longings.

I remember two times in my life when I was unhappy—woefully unhappy—and with good reason. The first occurred after my father died; and the second in the bleak days following 9-11 when it seemed that nothing would ever be right with the world again. I knew I was undergoing depression and desperately wanted relief, but couldn’t talk myself into feeling better.

Of course, time heals all wounds, but in each of these cases, there was a specific occurrence which worked to lift my spirits.

The Sunday after 9-11, after being glued to the TV news for days, my husband and I drove to Spring Creek Prairie near us to attend a raptor release. It was a rainy dismal day, but watching the release, the hawk lifting up into the drizzly sky, I felt something being released in me too. And I began to feel a little ease. Still upset about the events that had taken place, but the desolate aching was gone, replaced by the image of the hawk rising into the sky.

In the second instance after my father died and a smile had not crossed my face for weeks, I drove west on the Interstate to see my mother. I felt aimless, sad, and a little mantra began to go through my head. “This is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice, rejoice, and be glad.” This from a refrigerator magnet a friend had given me years ago. The verse floated around in my head, then formed itself into a melody. More verses and a chorus began to come. Within a few minutes I pulled into a rest area, and after a little furious scribbling, I had written a song! After all those days of feeling nothing but emptiness inside, what a blissful feeling that was.

Nature abhors a vacuum, the scientific principle asserts, the idea being that “unfilled spaces” go against the laws of nature and that inevitably the emptiness will “work” to be filled with something. And Will Shortz said that ”Human beings have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.”

So what can we do? Two things. First, I am a firm believer that to be happy and fulfilled, we must be doing what we love, using our gifts. For many of us, this is the gift of creativity. Of writing, painting, dancing, making music. And when we embrace our gifts and spend time using them, we find purpose. Secondly, we must be open when the universe presents to us opportunities for joy. Opportunities to fill any emptiness inside with something grand. –Lucy Adkins

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