Filling the void is no easy thing

THERE is a void at the centre of our being. The void filters out spreading its tendrils into all aspects of life.

People fill this void with many things; God, television, food, love, sex, drugs or alcohol. Families spring forth from loneliness, lovers entwine through fear, religions spin webs of yearning around the lost and the drunk close their eyes and head towards oblivion.

Our lives are spent finding ways to look into the void without despair. We stuff our faces with doughnuts and burgers filling the darkness with carbs and fat or we writhe and groan with interchangeable lovers seeking solace in sex.

Each day we struggle to turn our backs on the nothingness of existence. Hoping against hope that the flicker of what will be is extinguished before catching us unaware. Time passes, hours are filled and the minutes drop away until night falls and sleep steals upon the conscious brain and allows dreamtime to take over.

How we fill the void defines us as people. I would like to fill my void with expensive shoes and handbags, but find that all my money seems to have been pulled by an intense gravitational force which has sucked it into the dark matter surrounding Iberdrola.

I have tried many different ways to fill the void; sex (no one was interested), alcohol (I kept falling over which was probably why the sex didn’t work either), God (incense makes me sneeze and a man in a cassock makes me think unholy thoughts and I just couldn’t handle the guilt), sex (If at first you don’t succeed…lower your standards).

I tried drugs (not sure half a bottle of Benylyn really did anything for me apart from make me sick), marriage (didn’t end well), work (too lazy), love (don’t like to share my bed and “I love you” has always made me giggle uncontrollably) and children, (worked until puberty stole my lovely boy from me and replaced him with a smelly  bearlike creature who hides in his room and plays computer games all day). Food, worked for a while until I realised none of my clothes fitted and my shadow filled the whole pavement and half the wall and reached home half an hour before I did.

Filling the void has occupied man (and woman) for centuries, ever since the age of machines when humans found themselves with time to ponder and yearn. Let’s face it battling sabre toothed tigers or hunting mammoth to survive didn’t leave a lot of time to worry about the darkness at the heart of us.

Rational thought led us a merry dance and took us hand in hand towards anxiety and despair. Perhaps we humans were better off as a simian mass swinging from tree to tree and sucking on bark. If you are unaware of the void you don’t need to fill it so you will have a clear head, loving arms around you and a slim waist. But then, life would be pretty boring without the output of fellow void fillers. So writers, artists and musicians everywhere, pick up your spades and shovel as much poetry, art and music into the void as you possibly can and I’ll do my best with the Custard Creams.