We all want to feel complete: to feel like our lives have a purpose, that there is some point to all of this, that there is meaning to find in the universe. The entire advertising industry is built on this notion. Every day, whether we’re watching the TV, reading the newspaper or even getting on the bus, we’re bombarded with adverts telling us that we need this new product, TV show, film or holiday in our life, and then we’ll be happy. Religion tells us that if we say the best prayers, believe the correct things and give our money to the right church we will be made whole. Every day, we are bombarded by the idea that we are somehow incomplete, and that if we buy this product, get that job, go on that holiday or believe in that God then suddenly our lives will be complete and we’ll find meaning in the universe.
In my life I find that much of my identity is made up of potential; in what could be. This can be exemplified by my unwavering focus on my career, a future relationship, or completing my enormously ambitious bucket-list. I buy into the lie that somehow once I complete the bucket list, get the job or get the girl, then my life will be complete, the emptiness I feel in my soul will be filled, and I’ll be whole. As Jean-Paul Sartre says “Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.”
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“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.”
So often we place our identity in some future goal or promise, believing salvation can be found in the future, whether it’s in the form of money, power, status or some kind of heaven or hell. None of which can save us or make us feel complete. The reality is, nothing can fill the emptiness within us, nothing will make us feel complete. Sartre, in his 1943 book ‘Being and Nothingness’, famously said, “Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.” For Sartre, the nothingness or lack that we experience is deeply intertwined with our being, with our identity. We constantly try to fill the emptiness we feel inside of us and yet it never goes away because the emptiness is just as much a part of us as anything else.
That all sounds quite depressing. When I first heard it I felt quite hopeless. But now I’ve come to realise that this can be incredibly freeing. You see, once I realised that nothing could fill this lack, nothing can make me feel complete, that any endeavour I make to find ‘salvation’ in the future will ultimately disappoint me, I was given the opportunity to embrace this moment. Once I realised that no job, no religion, no power or relationship can make me complete, it opened my eyes to the possibility that maybe the only way for me to live a full, whole life, was to accept the lack as part of who I am. Not to waste my life, constantly trying to fill this lack and emptiness with the next thing I think will save me.
Mozart once said, “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” I think that is the perfect analogy for the nothingness we experience deep in our being. When we listen to a piece of music, it’s the silence in between the notes that provide us with the space we need to appreciate the melodies and harmonies that the composer has written. So, too, with our lives, without the nothingness and lack that we experience in our being, we could never appreciate the beauty and wonder of the present moment and everything it brings us.
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Kierkegaard says something similar. That dread is part of what makes us human. When one experiences existential dread one is experiencing what it means to be fully human. And to that end, If one does not dread then one is not fully human (not engaged).