You-Shaped Hole
by Tara Mohr
This poem came to me via a yoga retreat my daughter attended. The author & motivator is Tara Mohr. If you're looking for additional inspiration, visit her website at TaraMohr.com. I highly suggest reading her "Ten Rules for Brilliant Women." With permission I share her poem with you.
You-Shaped Hole
Sometimes the world feels
inhospitable.
You feel all the ways that you and it don’t
fit.
You see what’s missing, how it all could
be different.
You feel as if you weren’t meant for the
world, or the world wasn’t
meant for you.
As if the world is “the way it is” and
your discomfort with it a problem.
So you get timid. You get quiet about
what you see.
But what if this? What if you are
meant
to feel the world is inhospitable,
unfriendly, off-track
in just the particular ways that you
do?
The world has a you-shaped hole in
it.
It is missing what you see.
It lacks what you know.
And so you were called into being.
To see the gap, to feel the pain of it,
and to fill it.
Filling it is speaking what is
missing.
Filling it is stepping into the center of
the crowd, into a clearing, and
saying, here, my friends, is the
future.
Filling it is being what is missing,
becoming it.
You don’t have to do it all, but you do
have to speak it.
You have to tell your slice of the
truth.
You do have to walk toward it with your
choices, with your own being.
Then allies and energies will come to you
like fireflies swirling around
a light.
The roughness of the world, the
off-track-ness, the folly that you see,
these are the most precious gifts you
will receive in this lifetime.
They are not here to distance you from
the world, but to guide you
into your contribution to it.
The world was made with a you-shaped hole
in it.
In that way you are important.
In that way you are here to make the
world.
In that way you are called.
