Everyone who leaves your life opens a subtle trail of loss that still connects you with that person. When you think of these people, miss them, and want to be with them, your heart journeys out along that trail to where they now are. There are whole regions of absence in every life. Losing a friend is the most frequent experience of absence. When you open yourself to friendship, you create a unique and warm space between you. The tone and shape of this space is something you share with no one else. Your friend struck a note in the chamber of your heart that no one else could reach. The departure of the friend leaves this space sore with loss, some innocence within you is unwilling or unable to accept that one you gathered so close is now gone. It is the longing for the departed friend that makes the absence acute. Absence haunts you and makes your belonging sore.
Absence is never clear-cut; it reveals the pathos of human being. Physically each person is a singular, limited object. However, considered effectively, there are myriad pathways reaching outwards and inwards from your heart. The true nature of individuality is not that of an isolated identity; it is rather this active kinship with the earth and with other humans. When distance or separation opens, this connection is not voided—rather, the departed friend is now present in a different way. He is no longer near physically, in touch, voice, or presence. But the sore longing of his absence somehow still keeps him spiritually near. Longing holds pathways open to the departed; it does not erase people. Absence is one of the loneliest forms of longing, and when you feel the absence of someone, you still belong with the person in some secret way. There is a subtle psychic arithmetic in the world of belonging.
The ebb and flow of presence is a current that runs through the whole of life. It seems that absence is impossible without presence. Absence is a sister of presence. The opposite of presence is not absence but vacancy; where there is absence there is still energy, engagement, and longing. Vacancy is neutral and indifferent space. It is a space without energy. It remains blank and inane, untextured by any ripple of longing or desire.
By contrast, absence is vital and alert. The word “absence” has its roots in Latin “ab—esse,” which means “to be elsewhere.” To be away from a person or a place. Whatever or whoever is absent has departed from somewhere they belong. Yet their distance is not indifferent to the place or the person they have left. Though now elsewhere, they are still missed, desired, and longed for. Absence seems to hold the echo of some fractured intimacy.
The memory of the earth shrouds our thoughts with depth and mystery. In each individual, the earth breaks its silence. In human gesture, its primal stillness becomes fluent. Because we are so driven by thought we often forget our origin. We are seldom sensitive and patient enough to recognize in the mirror of thought the shadow of clay. The mind echoed back the earth’s deepest dreams and longing, yet its original break from the earth must remain the earth’s deepest experience of absence and loss.
In us, the earth experiences absence. Certain moments in nature seem to crystallize this loneliness. Often at night, when you hear the wind mourning around the house, it seems to be an elegy for us, its vanished children. Among animals the experience of loss often comes to poignant expression. When the calves were weaned from the cows on our farm, the mothers would cry all night the long wail of grief for their lost calves. Nature is elemental longing. The ancient stories of a culture frequently offer insights into absence and how it crosses all boundaries between the elements, the animal and the human.
