in light of the void
intro
Throughout the treacherous journey of self-discovery, there will be many truths you come across that fit the narrative you’re looking to confirm, or at least, adapt to. You will come across ideas, thoughts, experiences that will further influence and change your previously-altered perceptions on the delicacy of life, its meaning, and what to make of it.
The only one truth that can be given to those of you who are tirelessly searching for answers that will bring you that false, albeit comforting, sense of security and understanding, is that, well, truth is relative. It takes no solid form. It knows no loyalty. It is ever-changing, forever adapting to our experiences in life, both as a result of our early development and throughout our miserably blank adult life.
In each of us there is void. An emptiness that is all consuming — one that desperately clings to any and every stimulus that, for a mere moment, no matter how damaging its long term effects may be, brings us a sense of livelihood, adventure, excitement, rush. The search for everything — anything, really, that makes us feel alive in a world constantly denying and invalidating our pain is nothing short of an attempt to survive the sorrows our shadows carry. Numbing our grief sounds like a safer alternative to the self-inflicted wrenching pain that is processing grief, that is, until we begin endlessly search for anything that makes us feel alive again.
Most self-help books and articles you come across will tell you finding truth starts by looking within. While that isn’t necessarily wrong, the process of “looking within” is far too complex a process to be watered down to those two simple words, a process that surpasses the praise of introspection, and requires far more attention to your mind, body, heart, and soul.
In each of us there is that innate drive to make sense of the world and find meaning in it. The path to discover that purpose differs depending on who you ask, but I find that connecting with our inner adult child is an undervalued skill that can set the path to understanding not only yourself, but the world around you. Marcel Proust, the French novelist, said it best:
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.
The struggle is yours. No one understands it like you do, because you have the benefit of experience. What we often forget, though, is that victory is ours, too. You just have to work to discover it.
