Self Forsaken Dot

A personal essay

It takes millennia to search for answers to locate one grain of truth. The meaning of life is a subjective and ambiguous thing. I stare at a blank page, waiting for the ink to reveal the answer.

The black-tinted goo doesn’t move. The ink blot falls to the page, and the opaque confusion rises momentarily. That’s it!

The answer is so clear and marked in a single black dot in the middle of a sea of white. A tiny little thing that so many more beads of ink could surround. Dot…dot…dot..dot, the page begins to fill.

Now that one lonely speckle of color isn’t alone. There are many dots, but not one is the same. Ink bleeds into unexpected shapes. I start to notice dots overtaking others.

Gigantic groupings start to crop up. They are divided section by section, some larger, others shrink. The ink is unstable. The page is drowned in dots, and I can no longer find the first dot — me.

I was a dot in the sea of the flat opal ocean. The community came to surround me; I didn’t feel alone. Despite the care I felt for others, I lost myself.

I gave too much. 
I ignored myself. 
I drowned in a sea of good intentions in search of meaning.

I grab a new blank page, a fresh start. I draw a circle just the right size. Not too big, not too small, and I put myself in the center. I draw another bubble around me, a safety net.

Now, no matter how much happens in the world, I know that I matter. I deserve to be safe. Good intentions must be directed inward first. Only then can you thrive and help others.

The answer is simple, what is worth fighting for?

Yourself

Prompt by Ravyne Hawke in Promptly Written Spiritual Sunday “ What is Worth Fighting For?