My cousins have said they think i smoke weed when i write. I assume its the long serious stuff i write about they were referring to because i can go quite deep and get lost in the unraveling of a stream of consciousness. I have asked myself numerous times what the meaning to life is and i have not found a concrete answer to that. When i was younger the answer would be sure, but that’s because my experience to life was still masked by naivety and inexperience…maybe it still is. At times life had meaning because of an amazing lover…until they pissed me off…the other times life had meaning because of my dreams for the future until i realized how much those dreams evolve and change …the other times it was tied to success until i realized how that can’t fulfill me on a soul level…same as a beautiful loving family and friends. Everything can be perfect and you could still feel empty… the other times it had meaning because of all the causes i believed in and the good i wanted to do in the world and my desire to do something grand and change the world, until i realized the world could not be changed…good and evil need each other to exist and there is a thin line to being good or evil, it just depends on which side you are standing on…which view you have and both attributes are really the same. Everyone evil has a strong belief that what they are doing is good. They essentially are doing what they believe is right to them. I expected all these wonderful things to be stagnant and enough but they all happened in moments and seasons and changed. Nothing could be captured and held still enough to fulfill me. Everything that i thought could provide meaning to my life that was external to myself fell short until i realized nobody and nothing could fulfill me…enrich me yes, but not fulfill me.
When I realized this, i felt a scary void in me grow. What made it worse was that i also cared too much about what people thought of me. So a combination of emptiness , a relentless chase to finding lasting fulfillment and on top of it, people pleasing, led to a poisoned chalice of anxiety and depression. Trying to find fulfillment and meaning outside yourself is suicide, its chasing shadows of dreams that you will never grasp in your hands but rather will find yourself lacking more and more of… You will deplete each time you look because each time it slips through your fingers. The more i looked outside, the void grew and felt more and more impossible to fill. I felt so lost and that question danced and entangled with my identity…who i thought i was. If i could not find meaning to life, it was hard for me to know who i was. And the fact that i cared too much about peoples’ stamps on my forehead, i could never be my true self or even try to find out. I had to fit myself in a mold i felt was acceptable to whoever i was trying to please at that time.
We lose so many lives daily to this void. I have seen friends with palatable voids deteriorate to nothingness and give up on life. If not in suicide, it would be their lives slowly dissolving right before my eyes, with a resolution that all was in vain and the next thing they died in their sleep, or died due to some simple illness that they could have overcame…but because their spirits died before their bodies did, they had nothing else to live for, nothing to fight for. The attachment to finding meaning and failing to find it killed them.
I was lucky in the sense that i found my own path. I had to create it because i knew if i didn’t , i would surely die. And that path came with a different choice, to look within. I looked at the void as a signal and not a problem. My void became my friend and my inner compass. I have an understanding that my life is a continuous yearning and that’s all the void is, a yearning to feel ALIVE. I am meant to feel the void so that i can chase worthy moments not fill it with unhealthy things because im scared of it. We tend to be scared of things we do not understand but i believe most of us are born with a void. Some of us are unaware of it and become so good at numbing it and filling it with drugs, fame, power, work, sex, social stature, gossip, food, even blind religion because it makes us feel like we are not lost…like we belong. I think an awareness of this void is important and consciousness will then help us in how we can use it to fuel us not drain us. Thats really the difference in how we experience the world. Placing too much expectation on others for our happiness causes pain, disappointment and toxic relationships. But understanding that our happiness and fulfillment is in how we chase life and take responsibility for it, this frees us. Some become great through this realization and some are drained by it and drain others as well. I try to live for the magic and pleasures of amazing moments, yet i now understand those moments do not belong to me, they are fleeting and its OK. I do not feel the need to know the grand meaning to my life. That is the wander and mystery of life…experiencing and releasing both pleasures and pain with no attachment to them. When these pleasures and cherished moments come my way, even the pain, i sink my teeth in them, knowing they are passing and learning what i can from them. I experience them, let them go and wait for a brand new unique moment. I deliberately chase the feeling of being ALIVE because life is too fleeting to be worrying about what it means. What if its the experience of the wind blowing on your face and that pretty passing butterfly in your journey that matter most rather than your destination?
Are you aware of your void?
What does life mean to you?
Who are you when no one calls you by your title or name? When you lay on your pillow at night?
#mentalhealthawareness
#IAMVOID
#IAMLIFE
Maggie's diary 