Lost in the suburbs

I remember an emptiness, a lack of purpose or meaning, wondering why we even bothered; it was all a pointless whittling away of the hours, doing our time and then what, and why?  I still feel that way when lost in a suburban neighborhood, with nothing but beige houses as far as the eye can see, wondering if this is how the world has ever been and ever will be.  It wasn't one particular activity or hour of the day, a single experience, or a certain age.  It was sitting in a 'skills for adolescents' class at fourteen, it was watching some insipid show meant to entertain or educate small children that only managed to bore and insult my six year old intelligence, it was reading some required but dreadful book for english, it was those epoch-long sunday afternoons in the summer when it was dreadfully hot and we were supposed to just 'go play,' it was another birthday when I'd gaze at the future and see it stretching long and dull and grey before me, much like Lewis's road to hell, 'without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.'

It wasn't boredom or ennui, it wasn't despair, though perhaps it contained traces of each, but they weren't the cause, but rather a symptom.  I don't know exactly how to describe it, for it is not a thing felt with the senses but rather with the heart.  It was a spiritual deadness, a material futility, an all encompassing dullness and purposelessness, like looking to the horizon on a dreary, cold, grey day in November when all the world is brown and grey and dead and only long months of cold loom before you, so long that perhaps spring will never come, except it is not a physical winter that afflicts you, it is a winter of the heart, a hibernation from which the soul will never waken.  It's death, plain and simple, we live it every day and don't even notice.  Our very souls are dead and numb, going through the daily and yearly dance of routine, obtaining the world's version of success, but still, we feel nothing, so we work harder so we don't have time to feel that ache, that longing, which seems impossible to fill.

But we're looking in the wrong places, it isn't found on the internet, in social media, in our relationships, in riches or power, on TV or at the movies.  We glimpse it from time to time, but it never slackens our thirst, it only makes our yearnings worse.  Having a baby, getting married, buying a house, getting 'the job,' we think will fulfill it, but it doesn't, not for long, this ache won't go away.  What is it?

"He has put eternity into the heart of man."

That's certainly an intriguing thought, but what on earth does it mean?  That's just the problem, we try to understand it with our minds of earth, to define it in mortal terms, when it is something not of this earth, something outside the comprehension of our temporal minds.  Modern man has this strange idea that the material world is all that there is and will ever be, you live, you die, and that's it; eventually the sun will blow up and that's all folks.  So what then is the point of anything?  But man wasn't made for a moment, but for eternity, hence the ache, the longing for a home we do not know and have never seen. The only way to assuage that ache is to set foot on the path that will lead us to that unknown yet familiar horizon, to begin the journey Home, only therein can we be truly content and feel true Joy.  Or, we can content ourselves with our magical phones, busy ourselves with countless tasks and hobbies, surround ourselves with fun and boisterous people, and pretend we are okay, but we aren't, for there is an ache that won't go away and that the world's varied balms cannot hope to cure.