THE EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS LIFE

Do you ever wonder how life got so complicated? Do you ever wish for simplicity in life, just like it was when we were kids? By the way kids today have a pretty complicated life themselves so, just think it over, but you get the point, right? I sometimes think about my purpose in life; how the universe is perhaps trying to teach me, train me for a better life ahead. Do you think about it too? Do you also try to understand the meaning of it all? If yes, you’re complicating life, my friend.

The day you were born, life started to become complicated. You were told you were born on a particular day of the particular month of the particular year. Who made these days, months and years? You were told that the building you were born in is called hospital. You were told that you came out of a tiny hole called a vagina. You were told that your name is this or that. You were told that going to school, respecting elders, loving one another, following etiquette, etc. is expected and is good. You were told everything. Do you remember questioning a lot of these rules as a kid? But then you stopped, because you started to make sense of it, rather, you started to get the ‘meaning’ behind all this. If there were things that couldn’t be explained with logic, you assigned the meaning of supernatural or religion to it. But everything had to have a meaning. There’s a little voice in the back of our heads that just can’t stop creating meaning out of everything. Even right now. As you’re reading this article, your little voice is asking, ‘Where is this article going?’, ‘Is the writer going to make any sense at any point at all?’, ‘What does all this mean?’, ‘What am I thinking now?’, etc.

Doesn’t your mind start racing if your girlfriend/boyfriend doesn’t call you when he/she is supposed to? Some of us are relieved but some are having crazy thoughts too, right? We are trying to ‘connect the dots’ like Sherlock and trying to arrive at a logical decision. Did you know that the word decision has its roots in the Latin word cide which means to kill off? So when we make a decision, we’re actually killing off all other options, all other views, all other possibilities. If one day your boss starts to treat you nicely, what does your mind say? It may say a lot of stuff but it can’t stop assigning a meaning to it. And that’s where you get all of life’s complications.

Quantum physics has proved that everything is an illusion. In many experiments it’s been found that an electron is not present where it is present, but where the scientists look for it, i.e., they saw the electron wherever they looked. On a macro level, it means that life doesn’t exhibit what’s true; it exhibits what we believe to be true. We see what we want to see, we hear what we want to hear, we feel what we want to feel and we live what we want to live. Take a second, let it sink. You would now realise that life isn’t controlling you, you’re controlling life, I mean the little voice in your head is. Terminator: The Judgment Day put it quite rightly, ‘NO FATE’ (well said James Cameron, well said). Do you see that life is what you make of it? It is what you create. You will always see the electron where you want to see it.

So what happens if the little voice in your head is no longer controlling you? I say no longer controlling because it can never shut up, unless you’re dead. So, what happens if you stop making stories, stop assuming stuff, stop trying to create meaning out of everything? What happens if you stop looking for the electron? What would you see? Think for a minute before reading further, because if you get this, you’re going to be a changed person. So, what do you see if you stop looking for the electron which appears to be wherever you try to look for it? Nothing! You see nothing. On a macro level, if you stop creating meaning out of everything, life becomes simple and simple and simple unless it comes down to Nothing. And that’s what life is, Nothing. Without self created meaning, assumptions and guesses, it indeed is nothing. Life is empty and meaningless. It sounds sad but it is actually true and the most joyous realisations of my life. Now that I know that life is empty and meaningless, I have all the space in the universe to create whatever I want to create. Of course I will listen to the little voice in my head and create meaning but I would no longer be bound by it. I would always be aware that in the end, there truly is Nothing that exists. Therefore, you are what you want to be. The meaning of life that you had been searching for all your life is yet to be created and guess who is the creator, YOU!