Like most people, I walked around the city with a hole inside of me.
And although it hid from my view, it grew and inflicted me with pain, so I felt its
presence.
I set out on a journey to fill it up.
At first, I filled it with junk food.
This worked for a short time, but it always failed in the long run.
Junk food went inside, partially sealed up the hole, then fell out on the other side.
And as a result, I always needed more.
I ate another burger and drank another soda, but I never felt full.
Fat gathered around my stomach, my gut bred bad bacteria, and my own body became a war
zone—depression and self-loathing were the norm.
I was losing the battle, and I needed to change.
So I imposed restrictive rules on myself.
I stopped eating junk food and drinking pop, but I never found a replacement for those
behaviours.
The hole inside of me grew and inflicted more pain, and if I neglected it for any longer,
it would have eaten me from the inside-out.
So I reverted back to my old habits.
I preferred to be partially filled and alive, rather than empty, suffering, and eventually,
dead.
I tried adding new behaviours to my day.
I went to the gym and ate plain chicken with broccoli.
Instead of leaving the hole wide open, I tried to fill it with something different.
I spent immense energy gathering new pieces, but they were the wrong shape.
They were shaped like squares, and as far as I knew, the hole wasn’t.
So again, I reverted back to my old habits.
I asked myself deeper questions.
What did I really want?
What was the shape of the hole?
And what did I think would fill it?
After deep self-examination, I learned to see its shape.
At the time, I had taken on too many commitments.
Stress entered my life and created the hole.
Like a dragon, stress wreaked havoc on my body.
And instead of confronting it, I ran into the castle of Junk Food and hid.
And as long as I let the dragon roam, I never would have been able to leave the castle.
So I pulled the sword called Balance out of the stone and slayed the dragon.
I lowered my stress by cutting down on the number of hours I worked.
As my stress lowered, I found that my desire for comfort foods vanished.
I used the hours I had gained to cook healthy and delicious alternatives, allowing me to
meet my demands for energy.
Balance was the piece I needed to fill the hole.
And for the first time, I felt sated.
I felt full.
I wasn’t deprived, and I didn’t need more.
It felt like drinking a large glass of water after a long run—a perfect harmony between
the affliction, thirst, and the cure, water.
As I grew older, new holes emerged, but my process for dealing with them remained the
same.
I asked myself, “what is its shape?”, “what do I think will fill it?”, and “when
I get that thing, do I feel sated?”
The marriage between my biology and my environment gave a unique shape to every hole.
And because of that, I never found a rulebook.
Without knowing the unique shape of me, how could anyone know what I needed?
The process of change became individual and unique.
One man ate for pleasure.
Another man ate to relive the comfort his mother had provided.
And another man ate to cope with the stresses of poverty and parenting.
The first man said, “change is easy”: just stop.
The second man said, “Change is hard, but you must heal your mother complex.”
But neither solution helped the third man.
For each man, the hole took on a different shape, and so the process by which they filled
it was different.
I recently came across a Czech fairy tale called “The Wooden Baby.”
In it, a husband and wife wished for a child, but they were not able to have one.
“You should be grateful,” said their neighbour.
“You can hardly feed yourselves.
How will you feed a baby?
But one day, while out in the forest, the husband discovered a stump that looked like
a child.
He brought it home, and it came to life.
It begged for food, and so the mother made it a meal.
But after eating the meal, the baby was not sated.
It ate more and more, and eventually, it ate its mother, father, and other members of the
village.
As the neighbour pointed out, the family lacked wealth—not necessarily financial.
Perhaps they lacked material, spiritual, philosophical, psychological, or societal wealth.
But the case remained, the poverty of the parents passed on to the baby.
And so the baby entered the world with a hole, but it never found the thing that could have
sated it.
It consumed more and more and destroyed the world around it.
At the end of the tale, an old lady cut the baby in half, freeing all the people inside.
And so, the baby’s insatiable appetite led to its own destruction.
After I read the tale, I wondered how many of my own holes were the result of the family,
community, or nation I was born into.
How deep did some of them go?
How long ago were they first created?
Could I even fill all of these up on my own?
By failing to sate myself, how am I affecting the people around me and those who will come
after me?
And how many holes have I created in others?
As I discovered and filled each hole, I came to believe this process could not be separated
from uncovering and fulfilling one’s own destiny.
The journey to satiation, to wholeness, of old and new habits, might all be the same—and
they are all the quest of a lifetime.
So I continue to ask myself, “what’s the shape of the hole?”, “what do I think
can fill it?”, “when I get that thing, do I feel deprived, or do I need more and
more?”, or in other words, “do I feel sated?”