the fear of emptiness
I wrote this post on March 8th, a week before fleeing Europe with the rising tide of the coronavirus. now i’m posting this in Japan, making new homes with emptiness, and this feels like a strange and beautiful foreshadowing.
I identified in myself a subconscious fear of emptiness. it is a more specific feeling than the fear of loneliness — it is a habitual discomfort with blank, “negative” space.
and I mean negative space in the visual way — white space, absent space. you can feel the emptiness when nothing external is “filling” your life. when you are “doing nothing,” making no plans, your time and psyche is absent of input — no one is messaging you, validating you, giving you affection, taking you to new places, or giving you any kind of special attention.
I realized that when I first came to Paris, I felt the instinctual need to fill my new life with activities and people, and my days with plans. but who says that a “full” life is a good life? is emptiness / nothing-ness / the shadow / the yin necessarily to be avoided?
what power can we discover through the experience of emptiness?
emptiness is different from lack
sometimes what we need most is human connection and emotional support, and it is a deep need for nourishment — we cannot heal from traumas fully without that nutrition, nor grow and blossom.
but I propose that you can experience emptiness without lack. emptiness is a state and a place where nothing external is distracting your attention, and so you are left to face yourself. alone. emptiness is truly being in a room alone with yourself.
are we not terrified of that, as a society and modern culture? is that not why we distract ourselves with social media, emails, “work,” get lost in the voices of other people, struggle to discern our inner voice, feel disembodied from our beings, deaf to our souls?
sometimes we need the emotional support in order to be able to stand being in a room alone with ourselves — in the form of friendships, therapy, community of people. but the ultimate task is still the same. we must still face ourselves.
small ways of experiencing emptiness
first thing in the morning: being fully alone with myself; no phones
turning off my phone and leaving it off for 24 hours
allow myself full days without plans (and without panic)
saying no to invitations that simply “fill time” without nourishing me
concertedly making an effort to protect “empty” days or evenings
it is always an ongoing process, of course — first you open yourself to all kinds of experiences, then you carve down, deliberately, focusing on what actually nourishes you.
emptiness is daring to be truly alone in a room with yourself, and discover that it’s not empty at all — there is such a fullness and richness to presence — your own. there is no lack. then, perhaps, you will begin to prioritize it, make space for it. this particular minimal aesthetic becomes a chosen way of life— it is less, but more.