Today, Solstice Eve, I went for a walk at dusk. A medicine walk. When I take a medicine walk I talk out loud to Creator with whom I have a personal relationship. It always helps. I lay out my concerns and my fears, all my issues. When I am done and at my door, I breathe my prayer into the air and I say a Lakotan phrase that means "All my relations". When I say that phrase, which I have been saying for 30 years, it means, "we are all connected" or "we are all related".
On this walk I realized something I want to share that maybe some of you can identify with. Well, I feel I have been holding a lot these days, taking on a lot, dealing with a lot. But on this walk, I realized that it is hard being a human being and it is hard being a man and it is hard being a partner and it is hard being a father. And it is hard being Gary.
OK, that's a lot and some I do better than others, but it is important that we differentiate between these "roles".
"Roles" is the best word I could come up with but it falls way short of what it is to be human or be a man or be a partner etc. So I looked up "role" and here is what I got:
Roles become hollow places to occupy if we are not clear and in alignment with our purpose. Your purpose is about your intent, your raison d'etre (reason for being) as the French say. As we examine our roles, the real, underlying question is, why are we doing what we are doing?
When I was writing the book I just self-published I discovered that hollow (or hole) is related to Hell (the root is "hol"), which is the opposite of whole, which is related to "heal". Heal and whole come from the same root. So living a hollow role would be like a taste of Hell. We don't want to live hollow lives, but whole lives, full of healing experiences.
I think you will agree with me that that is food for thought. We are all, hopefully, living intentionally but which of our roles are the ones that are most meaningful for us and which of our roles are exhausting us most? These are good Solstice questions!
May we all live whole, never hollow lives.
Happy Solstice.
