To say it was black was an understatement. There was no longer any input to any of my senses. It felt like I had no eyes, no ears, no sense of smell or touch, wandering in cold nothingness. My hands in front of my face could neither be seen, nor could I feel the air produced by moving them in front of my face. I clapped, I screamed, I clapped my hands, I stomped my feet, all of it made no noise at all. I reached in my pocket and felt my cell phone, but the light did not work, and the ringer and volume made no sound. It was at this point the silence became very loud.
I sat down. At least I think I sat down. I was not vertical and was mostly relaxed, except for not knowing where I was or how long this would last. If I were to venture a guess where I was at, I would say it was a part of Limbo called "Pascals Room". You may remember the quote from his book Pensees, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."
For once in a long time I was totally alone with nothing but my heart and my mind to keep me company. I could not even hear my heart beating.
At first my head felt like it was humming, like my thoughts were producing some sort of noise of their own; thinking about my life, my wife, how I ended up at the call center and how I had come to such an empty life. The hum began to subside and I began to think slower and slower. All of the time I spent in the call center, just feeling sorry for myself that, "I wasn't fufilled". Yeah, the place is a bad place to work, and it brings out the worst in me, but I still am responsible for who I am.
I had embraced the anger, sadness and frustration in the call center for so long that I was comfortable with it. It had become my friend, the reason I used for not being useful to the world. It was not a good enough reason for not making a difference in other people's lives. I might not be able to have some dramatic job, or do all that I want to do, but I have to do something more than this.
I began to consider my actions outside of all those half-ass pseudo-intellectual reasons that I always brought up to justify my own selfishness, my own sin. I stopped trying to see "the bigger picture", and talk about my actions in the "context of a larger world view". I realized that so much of my own high-minded philosophy was just bullshit. Spending time trying to find truth in the world is important-but even a search for truth can be used to cover up your own selfishness. Absolute truth still lives. Sin really exists. Discussing all our own faults, trying to explain them away, or becoming obsessed with finding the root of your sins, does not cause them to cease to exist, it's just a convenient way to ignore the truth as you pretend to explore it.
I wept. I repented of my own self-centeredness. I asked God to forgive me and show me how to be useful to him and to those around me.
The darkness faded...
The Conclusion...
Thanks for reading,
AC
