hole in the soul

He woke up one morning to find a hole in his soul. It wasn’t immediately obvious, these things rarely are, and yet as he went through the automated routine: wee, shower, coffee, radio. It started to dawn on him that all was not quite as it should be. However, it wasn’t until he was at work. Actually it was during his lunch break, biting into a sandwich that he first noticed it, which was odd because it wasn’t a small hole.
It was about as big as a car
He went on like this for some time. He should have dealt with it because on the quiet it was taking root. It took a grip of his thoughts which he had previously thought were his own property, but now started to realised that he was experiencing an aggressive take over. And his thoughts were now like this.
I want a car, not just any car but a red sports car. Having this car would make me happy.
Whatever he did now didn’t bring him any happiness, but to be fair he had never been deeply happy. But this car, was It, it was the ticket to a new him, it was joy on four wheels and would deliver him into a new experience of life. So he begged and borrowed and bought the car. It was so good, even the smell was good - for about three months, and then little by little, the cost, the cleaning, the small scratch on the front driver’s-side wing and the rattle in the dash. Started to occupy a position which they shouldn’t, on the face of it, had a right to.
They grew bigger than their sum total and although he tried to push them back, he so wanted to love this car for ever, in the same way he had when he first got it, it didn’t work. Because – if he had looked he would have noticed - the hole in his soul had changed shape. It was no longer car shaped. It was kitchen shaped.
A new kitchen would make him happy not a car; somehow he had got it wrong. So he sold the car, which he found quite stressful because he couldn’t get anywhere near what he paid for it and he needed the money for his kitchen. Finally, however, he got the kitchen but the tiles weren’t quite right. I mean, it was lovely and everything, but not quite as good as he had hoped. All his friends liked it, which was almost as good as liking it yourself. But, he realised that the kitchen was incomplete without a cat, God knows why, so he got a cat; which climbed on the surfaces. He changed the cat for a woman; she didn’t climb on the surfaces, which was good. But she wasn’t perfect and whilst he was with her he would never meet the perfect woman. Not being the sort of person who settled for second best, he broke it off and took up mountain biking.
And all the time, day in day out, the hole in his soul grew deep roots and wide branches, until everything he did was overshadowed by it. He had a garage full of great things, but what was the point? Empty - was the word he found on the page and the feeling he woke up with, the taste in his mouth and the stuff in his wallet.
He was lying in bed at his brothers house, it was 5am and he was awake because his nephew was running around with a piece of string trailing behind him; apparently this is fun when you’re three. And he thought, wouldn't it be great if I could get as much pleasure out of a piece of string. So much in fact, that I would bounce out of bed at 5am in order to play with it. He thought about this for a while before saying, more to himself than the kid, “don’t worry buddy, you’ll grow out of it” and turning to the wall. And in a moment of clarity he saw it, clearly for the first time, the hole in his soul, of course he couldn't fill it. He hadn't been filling it, he had been feeding it, and all the time it had got bigger and bigger; now that’s a thought that bounces you out of bed at 5am.
From now on he was not going to feed the hole, he was going to fix it.