The Hole

The Hole(1,213)

July 20th, 2011

There’s a hole in everything.

I certainly don’t mean to be cynical. I am not a dark-spirited individual, nor would I call myself an optimist. I am just a pragmatist who believes that the work that needs to be done might just bear fruit. But we don’t achieve anything by ignoring reality—even when we insist that we’re generating faith.

There’s a hole in everything. For instance, family is great—but there’s a hole in it. It’s called children—because as delightful as they may be when they’re little, they do develop their own opinions and often select a different path that takes them away from a fulfilling potential to languish in mediocrity or even suffer disastrous conclusions.

There’s a hole in marriage. It’s called man and woman. As pleasurable as the combo may be, it also has tremendous openings for devastation.

There’s a hole in politics. The idealism of representative government does demand that we elect people, which requires a popular vote and means that the people who desire the positions need to be popular in order to get that vote—and popularity breeds compromise and deception.

There’s a hole in religion. All endeavors toward God normally insert too many rules and too many man-made inclinations to be able to gain Divine approval.

There’s a hole in everything. To deny this is to fail to understand the nature of life and even the will of God. God did not create a universe without flaw. He created a cosmos that is meant to be discovered, studied, understood—and meant for us to find a way to adapt to the accommodations. Thus the words of Jesus: “He that endures to the end will be saved.” A certain amount of endurance is necessary to achieve salvation. The main part of that endurance is understanding that there’s a hole in everything.

If you disagree with that, the rest of my essay may seem useless—because you will pursue the path you feel is necessary for your own sense of well-being. But if you have an ear to hear and you’re not intimidated by the notion that there’s a hole in everything, please read on. (Because quite honestly, I do not find my writings to be an end-all, but rather, a beginning of understanding—a commencement of common sense in the midst of the din of rhetoric.)

Once you realize there’s a hole in everything, you have three choices:

(1) There is a group of people who warn and complain about the hole. They preach about it. They try to frighten us into believing that if something isn’t done about the hole we are all doomed. My discovery about preaching is that although its initial intention may be to provide comfort and counsel, the platitudes of purity tend to make those who preach revel in self-righteousness. So the warners and complainers are both conservative and liberal—and the doomsday philosophy they promote is always more intense than any solutions they offer. They make a lot of money scaring a lot of folks into believing that life is difficult, so why try to make it any better? They promote the universal axiom of “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.”

(2) The second group which is aware of the hole in everything has the deep conviction that we can fix it. Yes—plug up the hole and everything will be fine. Get all of your supplies out and do repairs and in no time at all, the world will be a better place and we shall live as one. A noble thought. Of course, the only problem with nobility is that it leaves the serfs living in poverty outside the castle walls. The actual problem is in the material that everything is made of—how flimsy it is. So if you plug up one hole, the materialism of our lives gives way in another place, bringing in a fresh new leak. So people who are part of the “fix it” philosophy normally end up frustrated and angry, with their fingers pointed in all directions, blaming those around them for the ongoing fiasco.

There is a hole in everything. Jesus said, “In the world you have tribulation.” He didn’t say to complain about it or warn people. He didn’t tell us we would be able to fix it and cease tribulation from being a problem. He told us to be of good cheer.

So that leaves us with a third possibility. How do we do this? Well, the best way is to stop trying to fix the hole or warn everybody about it and just keep filling it.

That’s right, this is the third choice. God gave you a cup. Bring it to life everyday full and dump it in. Then go to bed at night confident that you’ve done your part. Just keep filling.

So you might think: “Isn’t it all going to leak out anyway? What’s the point?”

Well, there are those brief moments when our filling exceeds the leakage—and for a delightful few minutes, everything seems full. It is well worth it. Because the true sense of happiness in life is not always about being joyful, but rather, about knowing what to do to keep joy involved. And that is: keep filling.

People often ask me why I continue to travel on the road, doing my program. Here it is: if I stop I might have to sit around and believe that I’m supposed to complain about the hole, or even fix it. What foolishness! The hole was here when I arrived and it will be here when I leave.

I have two goals: Don’t make the hole bigger. And keep filling.

It may not be the ideal world of communal understanding and mutual wisdom that we envisioned as children, reading our Highlights magazines, or as teenagers, listening to the Beatles sing “All you need is love …”

But he who brings water to a fire is a hero. And he who fills up a bucket that is slowly draining is helping to keep the world from becoming completely dried out.