Emptiness

I’m feeling a bit tired right now . That’s not quite right. Restless. Bored. I’m grasping for entertainment. I don’t care what it is. I just want something to help me escape this moment.

But why? What is so terrible about the experiences that I’m going through? Physically painful? Nope. Uncomfortable? Nope. Tiring? Somewhat,but that has not prevented me from enjoying other things. Emotionally painful? Not really. It’s just boring. Life right now seems empty.

Of what?

That’s hard to say . Stimulation would be the most obvious answer, But it’s not the right one , when I feel this way I often grasp for it in the form of food (sweet, salty , calorie dense) , or news (click bait) or books. The trouble is they don’t work . I don’t feel better after getting some. I feel worse.

Then what am I missing?

Meaning. I think the emptiness comes because my actions are pointless. They change the world. They matter to others. But not to me.

So I try to substitute stimulation for meaning. But it doesn’t work. Enough is not a physical reality, it’s a feeling. Like giving a drowning man water, giving me stimulation instead of meaning does not help.At best, it delays me and lets me escape my problems. At worst, it allows my problems to fester, and builds an instinct to avoid them.

How should I handle this? How do I find meaning it tasks that I don’t get to choose? I can’t. I can’t create meaning out of thin air, or trivial tasks. Things will not become important to me just because I want them to be. Or because that would be convenient.

But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. I don’t need to find meaning. I already have it. There are meaningful tasks and important goals. I just need to correct them to my current work.

With each task, I need only to ask, how does this help me become the person who I want to be?