The Curious Case of Holes

Holes can be the most interesting part of anything

I have been thinking about holes, lately. Probably a result of going down so many ‘rabbit holes’!

The holes I ended up thinking (and writing ) about are not the dramatic kind. Not mining shafts or construction pits or anything that requires warning tape and hard hats.

Just ordinary holes that show up in language… and eventually in life.

It started when I made a simple observation—rabbit holes rarely contain rabbits.

They mostly contain confused gardeners, philosophers, and people who went looking for one small fact on the internet and emerged three hours later knowing the migratory patterns of Peruvian alpacas.

The rabbit, apparently, has moved on.

Donut holes are even stranger.

Someone discovered that if you remove the middle of a donut and sell the absence, people will happily buy it by the dozen.

It may be one of the most successful marketing ideas in history.

Take something away. Call it a specialty, and voila! You have found a way to new riches.

I notice that sinkholes contain no sinks, and for that matter potholes have no pots! Spring is mud season in Maine and with the thawing of the ground, come potholes and the blossoming of yellow “BUMP” signs everywhere.

These holes are simply the earth deciding, quite suddenly, that gravity is still in charge, but they can easily change one’s trajectory in life. A pothole without a ‘bump’ sign can break a drive shaft!

I have also noted that buttonholes contain no buttons and pigeonholes contain no pigeons. A keyhole contains curiosity more than keys.
And a loophole contains people who would rather slip sideways through responsibility than walk straight through it.

Language, it seems, is filled with holes that promise one thing and deliver something else entirely.

And then there are black holes.

Black holes are honest.

Whatever falls in stays there.

Light goes in.
Stars go in.
Time itself appears to trip and fall through the door of black holes.

Astronomers believe that once something crosses the boundary of a black hole, it cannot return.

This makes me wonder if the universe invented black holes simply so something—anything—would finally stay put.

The rest of life seems rather less predictable, and that is where the metaphor begins to shift, because holes do not exist only in language.

They show up in human lives as well.

The small holes arrive first.

The missing sock.
The lost phone charger.
The place on the bookshelf where a favorite book used to live before someone borrowed it and forgot to bring it back.

Annoying, but manageable.

But then there are the larger ones.

The chair at the table that stays empty.
The voice that used to call your name from another room.
The plans you made for a future that quietly changed direction while you weren’t looking.

Those holes are harder to ignore.

Holes of loss

At first we call them loss, and perhaps that is the right word.

Something has been removed from the center of our lives, much the way the middle disappears from a donut.

Except this absence is not something anyone would willingly buy by the dozen.

Still, I have begun to suspect that these openings are not quite as empty as they appear.

A hole is, after all, simply the shape left behind by something important.

Memory settles there.

Echo settles there.

Sometimes gratitude moves in as well…though it may take a while to unpack its bags.

And occasionally something else appears.

Perspective

I call it perspective.

I did not understand this when I was younger.

At that time, holes felt like failures. Evidence that something had gone wrong.

But aging has a curious way of changing how we see things.

A life that has been lived for many decades naturally accumulates openings—places where people once stood, places where abilities once lived, places where certainty once spoke loudly in the room.

We cannot seal those spaces completely.

Nor, perhaps, should we try.

Finding wisdom

Because every now and then something unexpected happens.

Wisdom begins to grow around the edges.

Not loudly. Wisdom is not dramatic.

It arrives quietly, the way moss spreads across a stone wall…slowly, patiently, until one day you notice the surface has softened.

This kind of wisdom does not erase the hole.

But it changes how we see it.

Instead of a failure, the opening becomes a kind of doorway.

A place where memory and meaning continue their quiet work.

And if you sit beside that opening long enough—without rushing to fill it—you may discover something surprising.

A new idea.

A deeper compassion for others.

Or simply the awareness that life is still unfolding, even in the spaces where something has been lost.

Not a rabbit.

But something close.

Something worth noticing.