Filling the Void

Putting down that pet project of ours was like having to put down a beloved pet before its time.  The hole it left behind was massive, and I longed for something new to keep my creative mind occupied and my hands busy.

I racked my brain as to what I could write about.

I heard that the basic rule of successful writing is to write about something you know.  If you write about something you don’t know, you’ll mess up on some fact or detail and blow whatever credibility you might have had as a serious writer.

Not only did I have to come up with something I knew a lot about, but I had to select something that I wanted to write about AND that people would want to read about.  That was quite a tall order.  Very few things in my repertoire met those three criteria.  Actually, just one thing came to mind, and that was largely due to my interactions with Katherine.

When two or three friends gather together to discuss what’s going on in their lives, their neighborhood —  and the world in general — by the end of the session, the group would have solved all the problems laid out before them, including world peace and world hunger.

Katherine and I are no different, but our discussions would always focus on relationships and how friendships play strong roles in people’s lives.  We would ponder what elements were needed to support a good relationship as well as what elements destroyed relationships.  By the end of each discussion, we would conclude that meaningful relationships were the key to a fulfilling and happy life... and how sad it was that very few actually invested their time and their “selves” in pursuing this type of happiness.

These discussions made me think seriously about the concept of friendship.  How does one become proficient in the art of friendship?  Although we learn much about friendship during our school years, we didn’t take any academic courses or classes focused on friendship.  Instead, we have to spend a lifetime experimenting on each other — with most of us getting it wrong.  Those who are persistent and courageous enough to actually discover the secrets of loving and lasting relationships seem content to take their secrets with them to their graves — albeit, with a satisfied smile on their faces.

All of a sudden, I figured out what I wanted to write about.