by James Park
Outline for Chapter 5:
The
Existential Void:
Discovering
Our Bottomless Emptiness
I. TWO KINDS OF EMPTINESS
II. OUR QUEST FOR FULFILLMENT
III. IMAGES OF THE VOID
IV. HOW THE EXISTENTIAL VOID TAKES OVER
A. The Collapse of Self-Fulfillment Schemes.
B. The Failure of Cultural Assumptions.
C. The Downfall of Optimism and Romanticism.V. ATTEMPTING TO MANAGE THE EXISTENTIAL VOID
VI. GETTING A GRIP ON THE VOID CREATES AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE
VII. EXISTENTIAL FULFILLMENT
A. My Personal Experience of Fulfillment.
B. How the Fullness of Being Comes.VIII. INWARD SELF-CRITICISM
Chapter 5
The
Existential Void:
Discovering
Our Bottomless Emptiness
Ever more patients complain of what they call an "inner void,"
and that is the reason why I have termed this condition
the "existential vacuum."
In contradistinction to the peak-experience
so aptly described by Maslow,
one could conceive of the existential vacuum
in terms of an "abyss-experience."
—Victor Frankl The Will to Meaning, p. 83There is a wind blowing inside us, thru a vast wilderness of emptiness.
The Void
is a dis-ease of our depths, the distress of nothingness,
a hollowness that threatens to engulf
and dissolve the rest of our being.
This menace does not threaten us
from outside.
Rather, it threatens to consume us
from within,
so that our skin will become too
thin to stand up all by itself.
At best, we can isolate the Malaise,
encapsulate the gnawing Void,
before it devours our whole being
and makes us disappear.
I. TWO KINDS OF EMPTINESS
This devastating
existential hollowness and screaming internal Void
is really an encounter with our Existential
Predicament.
But because we have no direct human
words for our Existential Dilemma,
we must borrow words from
ordinary experience.
1. “Emptiness”
normally denotes a situation of some specific lack:
“The room is empty” means that it
lacks either people or furniture.
“The glass is empty” means that an
expected liquid is missing.
However,
“my life is empty and hollow” does not suggest what is missing.
Nevertheless, we often treat this
deeper sense of nullity and void
as if it could be filled with
something:
“If only I had money...” “If
only someone would love me...”
But what if we had it all: family,
friends, status, success, security, health,
and enough money to go anywhere and
do anything we want?
Perhaps especially when we “have
everything”, we feel the Existential Void.
Chapter 5 THE EXISTENTIAL VOID: OUR BOTTOMLESS EMPTINESS by JAMES PARK 77
2. We understand
the causes of ordinary feelings of hollowness:
We may feel the absence of someone
we love.
Perhaps a job has come to an end
and we miss whatever it meant to us.
Or maybe we feel empty when our children
move away or disappoint us.
But below
these ordinary, intelligible deficiencies
lies a deep existential longing,
an inexplicable sense of ‘emptiness’,
a lack of content or purpose to life,
which nothing can fill.
3. Ordinarily
our sense of deprivation is temporary:
Buying a new house or finding a new
person to love satisfies that longing.
But if attaining
our dreams does not make us complete,
perhaps we are feeling our Existential
Void—a permanent nothingness.
4. Usually
what we want lies within one area of concern:
We can easily differentiate our need
for money from our need for love.
We do not seek interpersonal fulfillment
by accumulating possessions.
But our existential
lack is not limited and circumscribed.
There is no painless place in our
being to which we can fly for refuge.
Our whole being is one empty ache.
5. Each kind
of ordinary emptiness implies what we need:
If we feel unloved, we can seek better
relationships.
If we feel poor, we can try to earn
more money.
But nothing
can satisfy our existential hunger.
Nothing we can buy, attract, attain,
or achieve will fill the inner Void.
This existential frustration does
not imply what is lacking.
Perhaps we initially feel impelled
toward striving and accomplishing
because in the past achieving something
has brought satisfaction.
But thru frustrating experience,
we discover that our existential hollowness
is not filled by doing or having
or loving or being entertained.
After a while
we may recognize that we have two kinds of ‘emptiness’:
One kind of hollowness can
be filled by “the good life”.
But the other remains empty no matter
what we try.
Only after concerted efforts to fill
our Existential Void
with the things that usually satisfy
ordinary longings
are we convinced that our existential
hollowness is ultimately unfillable.
Those momentary experiences of happiness
and ‘fulfillment’
—which kept deceiving us that we
were on the right path—
turn out to be distractions and dead-ends,
techniques for covering our
inner Void, not for filling it.
Even in the midst of affluence, success,
love—the perfect life—
the hollow Void screams thru the
comforting fog.
In our secret depths, we still feel
utterly empty and helpless.
78 OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT: LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, & DEATH
|
|
1. Specific lack, deficit, absence, or loss. |
1. General, free-floating sense of utter hollowness. |
2. Caused by easily-understood situations in life. |
2. No connection with the objective world; an inward nullity. |
3. Temporary—until the situation is changed, the want satisfied. |
3. Permanent—no matter what changes objectively, the nothingness persists. |
4. Limited to specific dimensions. | 4. A hollowness of our whole being. |
5. Knowing what we lack, we know where to seek it. |
5. Nothing we can get, achieve, or accomplish will fill this Void. |
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