Filling Our Emptiness

Dr. Rajesh Bhola
India
Feb 07, 2014

 

People come to see me because they feel that their lives are meaningless. Many people feel this dreadful inner emptiness. An acute sense of emptiness or a void does come in almost everybody’s life at some point of time. We humans often feel that we are stuck in a game designed and controlled by others. Often people feel they have been cheated. They feel that they have done all the things that should have yielded them happiness, but this desired prize has eluded them. They are not sure whom to blame. While Western sociologists and psychologists view a state of emptiness as a negative, unwanted condition, in some Eastern philosophies this emptiness is a realized achievement. Modern philosophers meanwhile argue that the spiritual emptiness of our times is a symptom of its religious poverty. 

We all take some things for granted. We believe that, say, a good position at work, a good income, a good and caring wife or successful children means that we should be happy – and yet we are not. Hence the feeling of emptiness. It is a kind of unhappy equilibrium. This void, emptiness or hollowness of life makes us conscious of many wasteful efforts that we put in to attain happiness. Some philosophers believe that there is a wind blowing inside us, through a wasteland of emptiness; and we are like seeds being blown around this desert, with no possibility of germinating – and hence unable to fulfill our potential. In this situation our lives feel hollow, lacking inner strength and vigour. This void within us gives a painful, drawn feeling to our faces. We know we should be doing something, but we do not know what. This devastating hollowness and screaming internal void is really a deep encounter with our existential predicament. There is no painless place in our being to which we can fly for refuge. We need to isolate the malaise and encapsulate the gnawing void, before it devours our whole being. 

Emptiness normally indicates a lack of something specific: ‘the room is empty’ means it lacks either people or furniture; ‘the glass is empty’ means there is no liquid in it; however, ‘my life is empty’ does not suggest what might be missing (from our lives). Nevertheless, we often try to heal this deeper sense of nullity and void by trying to ‘fill’ it with something: we believe that ’if I had money’, or ‘if someone would love me’, all would be fine. But what if we already have it all - family, friends, status, security, health and money - to go anywhere and do anything? There are more than a few who have felt an existential void especially when they have had it all. 

We all have felt this hollowness and emptiness: when a relationship has collapsed, when we have left a job/career, or when our children have grown up and moved out.  However, below these superficial ‘aches’ often lies an inexplicable emptiness, a deeper spiritual longing - which nothing can seem to fill. The fulfillment will come not by doing, having, loving or being entertained - by living it up. We all want to accomplish something in our lives. We seek self-esteem, a feeling of worth, through our occupations. Love and marriage are also supposed to fulfill us. We might devote considerable time to enjoying ourselves. Perhaps we enrich our lives through travel, reading and education. Finally, we might even attempt spiritual self-fulfillment, through ritual practices, metaphysical beliefs and spiritual self-help.

However, the first step toward accepting true ‘release’ should be to recognize our malaise. Only when we have truly confronted our existential void, when we no longer believe that our feeling of emptiness can be ‘filled’ by possessions or achievements, can we begin our quest for existential freedom. We need to start finding meaning in the simple pleasures of life - through our senses. Let us stop to smell the roses, feel the sunlight, taste the food, see the beauty and listen to our heart’s calling. We should create our own meaning for (our) life….and feel no hesitation in respectfully enlisting the help of others.

Dr. Rajesh Bhola is President of Spastic Society of Gurgaon and is working for the cause of children with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities for more than 25 years. He can be contacted at rabhola@yahoo.com