Rohan is driving back home after a not-so-hectic day as usually is. He is neither happy nor sad. He is just numb at the routineness of life. No desire, No hope, No inspiration, Nothing. He has everything, yet something is missing. And somewhere deep down he knows, that it will never be found. A driver overtakes him, blabbing about something. He notices him. Something like this usually enrages him. But today, it felt useless to react. Even feeling sad or angry seems useless in the face of nothingness.
Vancouver sleep clinic was playing on the radio. Sometimes it happens when what you feel is matched by some random track.
“And I don’t know what I’m chasing
Maybe I’ll never know
When everything else around me is fading
I don’t know where to go”
He knows there are millions who feel like he does. Yet to him, his misery is unparalleled. He knows he has to go out again tomorrow, and then go back to an empty house. Doesn’t matter if someone is waiting at home or not, it will be loneliness again waiting for him. Of the worst kind. He feels as if daily, he is thrown in a deep well, and there is nobody there to rescue him.
…
Isn’t this true that most of us, at one point in time, have felt this emptiness in the same way or the other? The same feeling of unsatisfaction and unfulfillment has unnerved us all. And it’s very hard to explain what this feeling of unsatisfaction, of unfulfillment, is all about. All we know is that it is there. Just because no one can see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It really is. We just don’t know from where it starts and till where it stretches in our soul. It’s very hard to put in words.
Maybe it starts when we go to our jobs and somewhere inside we feel that it’s really not making us happy. Sure, money is important, Sure, the position we are at is considered great by society. But, isn’t all these which makes it even heavier on our soul? It’s like we‘re smiling just because society thinks we have all that’s needed to smile. Then the same pattern starts from one unsatisfactory job to another and another and another. And we carry on just because more money is offered or a new illusionary position is.
Or maybe it starts when we go to the school, college, or to a coaching centre to become part of some rat race and we feel it’s meaningless and yet there’s no running away from it.
Or maybe it starts when we go into a new relationship. And everything feels great in the beginning. But soon, even when everything is going great and we feel we are really in love with our partner, there is this small part of us, hidden from everyone else, something inside us which isn’t fully happy or alive. We know deep down, we can really feel that something isn’t excited as it should be. Something is missing. Something isn’t living. We are not living.
It’s then that we try to do different things to get that feeling of “just being alive”. We just want to feel alive and happy and fulfilled as we remember we once felt, but right then, we can’t. We only feel empty, we feel dead inside. We all have seen our alive self that seems to have been lost somewhere in the past. Now, there is this new self who isn’t alive the way we want it to be. There is some emptiness. There is a void, a deep dark hole.
So what do we do next? We try to fill the void with meaningless sex and alcohol or by binge-watching series after series or by playing video games or by jerking off twice a day or by stuffing ourselves with all these unhealthy junk foods and sweets — all these just to feel that nice sensation, to be distracted from that feeling and need of being alive again.
Even though it’s not really there, but in a way, it is there for a moment or two when we do all these. And so we get hooked and relentlessly pursue these activities just to distract ourselves, just to get that feeling of “life” inside us.
These activities take us almost there but not quite there. Yeah, Now I agree with that random quote which said ‘almost’ is the saddest word in the English language. He was almost in love with her. She almost stayed. He was almost good enough. They almost made it.
We almost fill the hole but not quite. We fail every time to fill that hole and now, it’s even deeper. Every time we try to fill the abyss of emptiness with the activities of pleasure, the abyss gets even deeper. Now, the frequency of these activities must be increased to just momentarily kill that — now even more profound — feeling of emptiness. Until one day, when even sex, video games, series, alcohol and even talking or doing anything seems pointless. And we stop all these activities and then that feeling of unsatisfaction, of unfulfillment, or numbness, of something dead inside, comes back to us again.
…
Like all of us, Rohan too is tired of the random sad days that props up from nowhere in the morning or evening. He is tired of the heart becoming so heavy that everything seems pointless. And then there are thoughts and feelings racing around which make the mind so anxious as if it will explode. “Can you for the love of God just shut up for one minute?”, he shouts at his own mind. He knows he is not really getting the fulfilment that he craves, so he substitutes it with lots of different stimulants, but the question is: will those stimulants ever be enough?
When we don’t get the love we think would make us whole, we go for random hookups and try to fill the void of love with sex. And it is so stimulating that just by thinking about it activates the reward centre of the brain. And it feels so good in the moment — getting crazy with a person in bed — but ultimately it was not what our soul wanted. Its needs are still not met. We didn’t really get to know them before we jumped into bed with them. We didn’t really love them, we never had a soulful connection with them though we want to believe that we really had.
We fantasize future with them and we think we are slowly falling in love until we realize that they are not what we want them to be. All that we were trying to do was fill that hole, that void- that we all feel inside from time to time- with someone not meant to fill that void. In this way, adulthood becomes a world of people with broken hearts trying to feel alive by breaking a few still in one piece.
But what’s the alternative? So we don’t stop. We repeat everything just to fill that void, and we try to force-fit the void with all the things and all the people not meant for it, just to flee from experiencing that emptiness which I know is so painful, so much hurting that anything we find to temporarily fill the hole, we just pour it in. Until we see it never really filled the hole. All it did was made it a little bit deeper than it was before.
Now we feel we’ve come too far. That hole now seems darker than ever and more empty than ever. We’re afraid to even look at it or acknowledge it. It hurts so much. It’s so painful and dismantling. There is numbness, still, there is immense pain somewhere deep. It’s like numbness and pain complement each other now. and It becomes so part of us that we just carry on with it. We get comfortable being miserable. We all are bleeding. And sadly, we all are okay with it.
We’re so scared of exploring that hole, of exciting that settled pain like settled sand in water that we again go back to making it deeper and filling it with all those activities. Understand this, you are thirsty. Drink as much soft drink as you want but your thirst won’t be satiated until you get water. Eat as much junk food as you want but it won’t fulfil the nutritional requirement of the body. Have as much sex with as many different people as you want but it won’t make the soul which is hungry for love content.
Maybe your soul wanted an outing with friends, or a connection with nature away from all the distractions, but you binge-watched a new series. At the moment you’ll definitely enjoy the series, but ultimately that’s not actually what your mind and body needed. It’s like applying band-aids to the body part which is in the dire need of a transplant.
…
Rohan still craves the actual piece which may fit the puzzle of his emptiness. He craves being intimate with someone. He craves the instant connection which feels eternal, he craves knowing someone, being vulnerable with them, being with them in a way that would make the world disappear for both of them.
We all miss doing things that make us really alive rather than doing something just to run away from that feeling of emptiness.
Now the question is, can we really know what will fill that hole without facing it fearlessly? Without exploring it? Without sitting with the pain calmly and experiencing it, trusting it and understanding it and taking a leap to see where it takes us.
We have to look straight into its eyes and tell ourselves ‘Welcome home’ because no matter how much we evade it, it is our home now.
“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” Richard P. Feynman
Philosophical answer
“Death is not the greatest loss. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we’re still alive”
Where does this emptiness arise from? We are so used to the routine, maybe because we were trained to live this way since childhood. Freud would certainly find reasons in our childhood for the sudden kindling of this feeling of emptiness, yet I am not interested in assigning the blame to our childhood.
Although he is right. We are actually used to the routine. Waking up, travelling to work, four hours in the office, lunch, four more hours with last few spend looking at the watch, travelling back, dinner, scrolling social media, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and sometimes even Saturday — according to the same routine. Yet, from nowhere, one day ‘why’ arises and this emptiness is felt for the first time.
I think this emptiness is the pendulum oscillating between acceptance and rejection of hopelessness. But yes, hopelessness is definitely there. As long as there was some hope, there was a source of happiness in the future, an event that would make our life fulfilled and complete. It is said that the winner of the beauty pageant cries the hardest not because she won but because she cannot win again. She has lost all the hope to win again.
This routine shows us how quickly the future becomes present and present, a long gone past. And thus, we are left with nothing other than hopelessness. We feel somewhere that this is it. This is how it ought to be and that soon enough, even this memory of the feeling of emptiness will be replaced by some other feeling, quest or problem. The pattern becomes so obvious that we may deny hopelessness but we sure as hell cannot deny the feeling of emptiness. And we accept that nothing will ever make us feel fulfilled and complete again.
Let’s look at some of the reasons why we feel emptiness:
1- We think of ourselves as incomplete: Maybe the very first problem is this continuous acceptance and affirmation that we are incomplete and there is no hope for us. Just accepting oneself as a lost cause closes all the doors of the way out of this emptiness. You’re not incomplete. Neither am I. We just have a limited belief about ourselves.
2- You validate your sadness over and over again: Acceptance of being sad is good. But validating sadness every time by saying ‘everyone is sad and I am not alone’ starts a vicious cycle. Now, even when you’re not sad, you’ll find someone sad just to trigger your memories of sadness. And this becomes a reason for you to not let go of your sadness. There is a reason why the mourning period even after the biggest pain that strikes mankind — death — was kept 13 days long amongst Hindus. They decided it was enough and one need not carry the sadness beyond that period, yet we all carry the same issues to get sad for years.
“Man only likes to count his troubles, he doesn’t calculate his happiness” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man is free, and he is free to choose his pain and misery. So, when Sartre says ‘Man is condemned to be free’, he is actually telling us that freedom is something inflicted on man. That this freedom is in a way a curse.
Thus, we become what we choose to become. So, if you seek suffering, you are going to have it, without fail. You are free to choose.
Ask yourself, Why do you want to tell the world you are sad? Doesn’t matter if the sadness is made up or real. Once you start telling, soon the lines between actual and made-up sadness get blurred not only for the world but also for you.
Cry — if you want to — alone. Scream and shout but don’t go on intentionally removing band-aids off the wounds and showing them to scour sympathy. You will get some sympathy — no doubt in that, but doing so will only encourage the others to rip off their band-aids too. Such give and take will soon give birth to a society of wounded people showcasing scars for sympathy. A person will only listen to your sad stories over and over again because he is investing for the future when he gets sad and needs to tell his stories.
3- Dubious parameters of comparisons: Who said owning a car at 30 is the parameter of success? Who said you should have a family or your own house till 35 to be counted as successful or happy? Why do you compare your life and think less of yourself? Why compare yourself with some random parameters set by an unknown person? Why regularly compare yourself in terms of wealth, fame, relationships or success? This takes us to the fourth reason.
4- You think you’re Behind in life: This is something I read on a poster and it hit me hard. “You’re not behind in life. There’s no schedule or timetable that we must follow. It’s all made up by society and your comparative mind. Wherever you are right now is exactly where you need to be. Seven billion people can’t do everything in exactly the same order.
We are all different with a variety of needs and goals. Some get married early, some get married late, while others don’t get married at all.
What is early? What is late? Compared to whom? Compared to what? Some want children, other’s don’t. Some want a career. Others enjoy taking care of children and home
Don’t compare life with anyone’s schedule. Don’t beat yourself up for where you are right now.
It’s your life. It’s your timeline, not anyone else’s and nothing is off schedule.”
5- You hold a grudge- You haven’t made peace with your past. We are all bad in someone’s story. And by that logic, someone is bad in ours as well. Be like a mirror. It shows us the present. Neither past nor future. It wipes itself clean once we move away. So should you. Once the event or the person is gone, wipe it off your soul. I know it’s easier said than done. I know it’s hard to forgive and forget. I know how much you want things to be the same as they used to be. And if not that, I know you want to come out as a winner and show them their place. But right now, you’re losing just by keeping the grudge. Even thinking about winning is itself a loss. With a grudge, you’ll be like a guy trapped in the Pit. Read the article below to overcome this obsession.
In this chaotic world, we don’t always get closure the way we want. Revenge fantasies never turn out the way we want.
6-You don’t know who you are: Therefore you struggle to find the meaning in life. Knowing yourself helps us find meaning and our purpose in life. Society gives you so much. Without knowing your purpose, you can’t know what to give back to society. And you won’t feel complete until you complete that circle by giving back. Read the below article to know yourself.
7-You don’t have a dream: Dreams are nothing but hope for a brighter future. Without dreams, the immense progress of humanity would not be possible. So, if you don’t have one, then probably you feel worthless because humans were made to dream. We all live in the constant hope for a brighter future where things are better than today. And where we are more fulfilled than today. Dreams just turn that hope into belief.
One other reason you are afraid to dream is you carry the baggage of unrealised goals and regrets. Listen to me. This is the new you. Don’t compare it with the one who failed at something at some point in the past. The ‘past you’ didn’t have any regret and so the ‘past you’ was unwise. Now your soul is worn but wise. A wise man is full of regrets. And most importantly, this new you will not start from scratch. The new you will start from experience.
…
If these 7 reasons don’t fit the reasons for your emptiness, then there are only two more and the biggest and most common ones:
1- You don’t love what you do- Three workers were building a wall of the Taj Mahal-one of the seven wonders of the world. A historian came and asked them what they were doing. The first one answered, ‘Nothing worth telling’. The second said that he was building an ordinary wall. When the historian turned to the third, he said, “Don’t you see, I am building the most beautiful monument of the century”.
Your work should be a celebration. A mother and a house help both cook food, but a mother does it out of love. It’s a tedious job for house help, but not for a mother.
You feel empty because you keep doing all that which your conscious doesn’t approve or relate to. You say you value family and relationships, but you rarely take time out for them. You say you value peace, but you never sit quietly at a place with yourself. Your actions don’t align with your thoughts, hence you feel empty.
“Happiness is when what you think, say and do are in harmony” -Gandhi
Apart from work, it is important to release the abundant human energy and satisfy the inner instinct which our ancestors satisfied by hunting. Dance, sing, cook, write, make some beautiful art. Don’t worry about you being a bad singer or painter. Sing badly. Sing for yourself. You are not meant to be good at everything that you enjoy doing. Let this sink in. Do small things. And do not forget to live while making a living.
“No matter how much you love your work, if you lose total control of your time and freedom to express yourself creatively, you will end up miserable.”
Also, try to understand this. Sometimes we feel empty and tired not because we do more than enough but because we do less than what sparks life in us. If you were really tired, from where would you summon the energy to go on an extempore trip? Or how would you run out if say, your house caught fire in the middle of the night?
2- You don’t have someone- It’s hard to say who this someone is. It could be a lover, or a friend or for that matter anyone. Someone who can listen to you — the unfiltered you. In front of whom you can spill everything out without an ounce of minding what the fuck comes out of your mouth. Someone who understands you before you even try to explain them. Someone whose company, or just a text makes you feel immensely secure and protected. Someone with whom even silence is comfortable. Someone whose presence makes you feel the same way music does. In simple words, it’s the lack of such kind of meaningful relationship that makes you feel empty.
It is said that loneliness is not the lack of company. Loneliness is when you’re surrounded by people and yet you feel alone.
Most of the time this emptiness gets deeper and deeper when you’re in a loving relationship, yet it doesn’t make you feel complete. Love is the prime requirement of homo sapiens, right from birth.Lack of love creates a hole that is hard to fill by any other stimulants. Henry miller rightly said when he contemplated life;
“If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical….you’ve got it half licked”
But It is necessary to point out that love alone is not enough to kill that feeling of absurdity.
“If it were sufficient to love, things would be too easy”- The Myth of Sisyphus
The more one loves, the stronger the absurd grows. Because having love by our side every day makes us lose the importance of not having it from our minds. Thus, I can comfortably say that love alone may not fill that emptiness, but its absence surely makes the abyss seem deeper.
Conclusion:
Looking for the answers to this emptiness in someone else’s words can be dangerous. Because you might be surrendering to the egomania of the man whom you are asking. Every man’s emptiness is unique as was Rohan’s to him. So, every person has his own take on life, and to presume that one thing that was an answer to one’s own abyss of emptiness is going to be an answer for another is egomania — speaking the words of Hunter S Thompson — disguised as charity.
This may be dangerous because when we find something working for someone but not for us, we often rush to accept ourselves as a lost cause. So, instead of giving you concrete direction, I — through this article — just pointed out the banality of the problem of emptiness. And now I ask you to search for your own answer.
I would certainly not leave you lurking in the middle. Rather I’ll use the guiding words of Hunter S Thompson to show you the only two paths to life. He says, In life we have only two courses of action, that is, to float along with the current of uncertainty or swim against it in pursuit of a goal.
The current is always there. If you’re not swimming against it, you’re swimming with it. Swimming with it means you have blissfully surrendered to the will of the unknown, and thus you have the least control over the outcome in your life. If you swim with it, your life will be full of only one of the two things at a time — sometimes you’ll curse the misfortune and emptiness while other times you’ll be grateful for serendipity and happiness.
But since emptiness is troubling you already, the other option is to go against the flow. Even thinking about emptiness and exploring it is going against it. This process is arduous. It will definitely take a toll on your mental and physical health. Swimming against is choosing to suffer intentionally. But where would this immense progress of humanity be, if some of us have not had dared to swim against the tide — and build roads and bridges, planes and spaceship, houses and sky-touching monuments, heart soothing music and eyes-numbing poetry. Nietzsche rightly said that a fulfilling life goes through suffering,
“Suffering is the only thing that bestows value upon the world. Without pain and misery, life would be absurd and worthless. … In other words, the person who can endure the greatest suffering is the greatest of men” — Nietzsche
Still, to avoid suffering to an extent— in this quest to swim against the current — try not to set a tangible goal as an answer to your emptiness.
For example, most people would set a goal to become someone — a government officer, a CEO, married man or woman — or earn some amount of money because they think it to be the answer to their emptiness. When we set goals like these, they demand certain changes in us to be fulfilled.
When a man imagines a purpose, he becomes a slave to the demands of the purpose to be achieved. This quest may leave him unfulfilled because he’ll have to change to achieve the goal from one moment to another. Then the self who sets the goal will no longer exist when the goal is met. And the one who achieves the goal will no longer be the one who wanted that in the first place as the changed self will want something else.
Thus, achievement of desire often does not fulfil us the way we imagined because the one who desired that thing is not always the same person who gets that. In other words, the one who wanted to become CEO or rich will not be the same person when the desire gets fulfilled.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”-Heraclitus
Does this mean I am telling you to just go with the flow? No, Not really. I want you to set an intangible goal — of knowing yourself. This is also against the flow but it involves doing everything — or at least something — to know your current self better. This is also an ongoing quest because humans have a deep-layered character that changes regularly and according to their environment.
But, this quest involves doing all the things you enjoy doing. Crave for new experiences. Travel more, meet new people, read, draw, create some music, dance, exercise, cook and most importantly never ever be afraid to love once more and once again. Because at the end of the day, if love hasn’t given your life meaning, then probably it isn’t love at all.
Trust me, knowing yourself will sparkle your being and clean your edges and then, hopefully, you’ll be able to find your perfect soulmate who fits the puzzle of the emptiness once and for all.
Still, if you want to go with the flow, that’s okay too. Just make a conscious choice so that you do not regret where the current takes you. Remember, a man who delays in the choosing will inevitably have the choice made for him by the circumstances.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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