filling the void within

As we spend our lives, most of us feel a void within us. This is because we humans are driven to pursue meaning, significance, love, and contentment. While some of us choose a correct path for themselves that align with their inner values and goals, others start pursuing wrong avenues either to fill the void within or to simply flee away and become numb to it.

This innate drive to fill this void can sometimes lead us to running after accomplishments and accoutrements that add little value to our life. We end up taking journeys that don’t resonate with us, and in the end, when we do achieve the things that we were after, we don’t feel satisfied and the void within us remains unfulfilled.

As Marcus Aurelius wrote in his personal reflections, ‘“You’ve wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.”

We start thinking that ‘more’ is the answer to the most pressing issues in our life: more money, more love, more sex, more fame, more power. But we don’t need more to feel satisfied in the present moment.

It’s also not about finding radical solutions and magic bullets to change our life and feel complete.

The answer to this is neither getting numb and fleeing away nor compensating via externals. We fill the void within by living in alignment our Inner Being, and our true human nature.

When we focus on living an aligned life that brings us joy and also adds value to other people’s lives, we satisfy this void.

We feel whole simply by living the way we want to live and focusing on what’s important to us without caring too much about what other people think. By being good and kind to others, by attracting meaningful relationships, interactions, and experiences to enrich our life, and by living in the best way we can.