The Emotionality of "The Empty Chair"
The Story Behind the Poem
To preface this post, I have to give a little context. So, here's the original message that I sent to my email subscribers back in September for a Tea Time with Mr. B which describes the inspiration behind the poem.
TEA TIME WITH MR. B SEPTEMBER 19, 2024
I don't consider myself a poet, I mean... I have like ten or more poems on my Notes app that I started to write from inspiration but have yet to finish them. However, for the ones that are completed, I was wondering where the inspiration came from. And I came to the realization that for every poem that I have completed, there has been a vision that accompanied it, and it was written when I should have been asleep. I'll explain what I mean by that in minute, but first here's the poem that I want to focus on today:
I entitled that poem "The Empty Chair" because I was inspired by an empty chair. I know that seems odd, but here's the whole story.
It was March 12, 2023. I went to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, The Mill at Finley Farms.
Quick sidetone, if you're not from the Springfield area, but you happen to come here sometime, I highly encourage to try the food at The Mill. It's a little expensive, but it's worth it!
Alright, now back to the story. The chair was the visual spark that ignited a fire to remind me of the emotion to deeper issue. Because the nature of my life, whenever I go out, especially when I go out to eat, I'm often by myself. So, there's pretty much always an empty chair at the table with me because most restaurants are not fitted for single people. And when I saw that empty chair that night, I was reminded of the loneliness that I often feel when I go out. Now, this was not the first time that I felt that, but at that moment, it hit me a little different.
Now, I don't talk about this much, but I believe that I am certain level of clairvoyance that allows me to have visions. Honestly, I struggle with this idea because of the connotation it brings, but I know that it's not daydreaming nor dreams because whenever I have a vision there's this feeling that accompanies it which is hard to describe. But it often leaves me questioning the possibility of the vision becoming reality which is something that doesn't happen when I have a daydream or dream. (I'm thinking about writing a Tea Time just about visions, so I won't go into further detail here.)
When I see the chair, I have vision of a certain lady sitting in that chair. Immediately after I come back to reality from "vision world," I feel words start to percolate in my mind for the hook of a poem. However, just like many other of my completed poems, it wasn't until 2AM almost 3AM that the poem actually came to me (about ten hours after I had dinner), and I was able to write it out.
So, in the end...
Being inspired by an empty chair + having a vision of a certain person + being reminded of the loneliness that I often feel + having a desire for that certain person I saw in the vision to fill the empty chair = "The Empty Chair."
Here's a picture of the exact moment that I was inspired to write "The Empty Chair."
THE EMOTIONS BEHIND THE POEM
When I sit and contemplate what I was feeling when I was inspired and wrote the poem, it’s hard to point to one emotion; it’s hard to be specific of how the inspiration felt. The best answer I can give is that it was a culmination of emotions wrapped in calmness.
The conglomeration of emotions that I felt when I saw that chair is a composition of…
TRANQUILITY
There are two sides to the tranquility coin of this story.
What do I mean by this?
What I mean is that when I was inspired to write this poem, I felt no pressure and no demand to write it. I felt no pressure and no demand to make things happen with the person who inspired the poem.
I have always loved writing, and I have always dreamed of writing a book of poems. And I have read a lot of books in my lifetime, but I have only had a handful of times where a book as ‘shook’ me to core and made me think, “I want to produce something like this one day.” For me one of those authors, poets, that made me want to write something big was Maya Angelou. I remember, so vividly, reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now and telling myself that one day I was going to write something so authentic as Maya’s story was.
But here’s the thing… writing poems has always been a struggle for me. Each time that I have been inspired and wanted to write a poem, I had to really try at getting even the first stanza out. I had to meditate on what the poem was going to say for days if not weeks or months—most of the time the poems never came to completion. But that was not the case for this poem. When I saw that empty chair and thought I should write a poem about it, I felt my soul say,
“Don’t worry. The poem will be there when you’re ready to put pen to paper.”
At the time, I took no stock in that moment my soul whispered out, but looking back, I feel it was cue to the bigger feeling I was having. Because in the moment, I wanted to do what I have always done my entire life—make things happen.
However, that’s not what my soul truly wanted. My soul just wanted to stop holding those feelings and thoughts inside. Yes, at the time my mind was focused on Riley, but it wasn’t solely about her. My entire life had longed for this romanticized life… the high school sweethearts get married, but that wasn’t me.
When I saw that empty chair sitting in front of me at the Ozark Mill, tranquility stepped in. And it said: there’s no need for me to do what life has conditioned me to do… there’s no need to make things happen.
SELF-COMPASSION
Whew!
This one is not an easy emotion for someone like me. People like me are conditioned to achieve, perform—dare I say—be the best. And in this moment in life, I struggle with self-compassion. Every time I feel like a failure because my life looks nothing like I had imagined, I have to remind myself to be self-compassionate.
And in that moment when I say that empty chair, self-compassion told me that I was not the only person to feel this way; many have sat in this moment and later found the love they were searching for.
Self-compassion came in and reminded me to be optimistic that reality can change and morph more into that dream that I hold in my head.
HEARTBREAK.
Ever since I read Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, I have understood heartbreak in a different light. Before I read it, I knew what heartbreak was, but I didn’t think I ever truly experienced heartbreak because I was never in the “ideal” situation for heartbreak to occur—I never was in a romantic relationship. But in Atlas of the Heart, Brené quotes Joe Reynolds, a retired Episcopal priest, “… Heartbreak comes from the loss of love or the perceived loss of love…”
It was in that moment of inspiration—the moment of seeing that chair—that I not only allowed myself to truly experience heartbreak, but I also allowed myself to accept the fact that the situation with Riley left me heartbroken.
Before this point, I refused to allow myself to even think that she had left me heartbroken because I never wanted to paint her in a bad light… I’m not saying she’s perfect, but she is very, very close to being perfect.
It was in the moment that I saw that chair that I knew I would have to live life knowing that our souls would never converge into one. And to love that deeply and to not be able express that love to that person is painful. But to quote Brené Brown and Joe Reynolds…
To love with any level of intensity and honesty is to become vulnerable… To love is to know the loss of love… Every time we love, we risk heartbreak… And it's totally worth it. The brokenhearted are the bravest among us - they dared to love.
Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart
Now, I have done some light research on emotions for a couple of years now, and out of all the emotions—in my opinion—love is the emotion one of the most complex emotions to work through. When it comes to love, there are emotions you have to work through before you get to love… it’s like you’re trying to get to the boss level of a game. When you try to love, shame might stand in the way of your getting to love, worthiness might stand in the way, belonging might stand in the way, and many more emotions. When you love, you’re never just arrive automatically at love; there’s a spectrum of emotions that you have to “conquer” first.
Now, it seems that if one was to face all of these emotions at the same time, they would probably “go crazy”. However, there was one last emotion, and this last emotion was standing at the end of the tunnel waiting for me…
CALM
Through the mess of emotions that I felt from both the inspiration and the actual writing of the poem, the emotion of calm was on the other side waiting like with her arms outstretched and ready to embrace me. She was there as if she was saying that it was okay to feel the whirlwind of emotions that I felt.
As someone who has to work on calm as a practice rather than a trait, I’ve shortened this to two quick questions I ask myself when I feel fear, panic, or anxiety rising:
Do I have enough information to freak out? The answer is normally no.
Will freaking out help? The answer is always no.
Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart