NO TV Day 10: Empty Spaces Poem

Like a Double-Poopin Kitty,
Sometimes, you just got
to empty your spaces.
Hi!  I'm Jake!

My wife, Callie, and I quit watching TV for 70 days.  It feels good to make space in my mind for all my extra thoughts!  Feeling creative!  Below is a poem I wrote.


"We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful"

-Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Empty Spaces
By Jake Sharon

When we create a space in our home
Inevitably, objects will fill it.
Unless you are in a hotel room, there is always plenty of stuff, stuffing your space.
When we create a space in our minds
other thoughts fill it- so fast!
You can't not think.
Trust me. I've tried.

So, when we turn away from the TV
When we create a space in our minds
What do we fill it with?
Schemes? Plans? Dirty thoughts? Ambitions? Ideas? Hope? Goals?
How do we translate that empty space into fulfilling our dreams?
Or fulfilling our landlord's dreams by paying the rent check?

How do we take the TV torpor
and turn it into the successful mind
of an envied 20-year-old who's actually on TV
filling America's spaces?
How do we insert ourselves into everyone else's space?
How do we push ourselves right up their spaces?

Then again...
Isn't there enough to fill everybody's empty spaces?
Perhaps it is just best to go back and fill our own space
with simple tasks
a little freedom
zero-ed debt
and the cleansing power of a work ethic.

Quiet.

Make a space
then fill it with a job well done.
Serve.
Like a moon, a light year away from Earth
Be the space that the people don't notice.
But that's there, like George Bailey,
slightly touching everyone,
making such a wonderful, simple difference.

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