Dear friend,
When you are suffering most, when it looks like life has pinned you down and there is no possibility left, pause and remember a strange, fundamental truth: life itself is empty and meaningless. And it is even empty and meaningless that it is empty and meaningless.
That sounds shocking at first. But think about it. From the moment we are born we inherit all kinds of meanings and shoulds, from our families, our communities, our cultures. These silent forces shape how we behave and what we believe, and we rarely question them. The astonishing, liberating realization is that none of these meanings are inherently real. They exist because we have collectively agreed on them, often without even knowing we did.
So if you feel powerless because your manager keeps finding fault with you, or your partner’s disregard has you low, or your business is failing and you are drowning in self-doubt, notice how the meaning you attach to these circumstances shapes your suffering, and your capacity to act. It is not that the facts do not exist; maybe your manager really did snap at you over unfinished work. But there is no inherent meaning to it. The pain comes largely from the meaning you give the facts.
We are meaning-making machines. We give everything a story, a twist, a narrative, and even the claim that “it is all meaningless” is, ironically, a meaning we invent. But here is the turn: since we created the stories in the first place, we can also create new ones. We can choose meanings that give us power, possibility, and renewal instead of ones that drag us down. Think of it as an ontological detox, reinventing yourself by reinventing the meaning.
Once you grasp that everything is empty of inherent meaning, you are free to stand in that emptiness, no longer weighed down by the unexamined meanings that held you prisoner. Okay, I can give this situation a new meaning, one that actually empowers me. This is true of the big things too. Whole nations go to war under the banner of some grand inherent meaning, but look closely and you will see even that was invented, carried forward, and rarely questioned. The victors rewrite what it all means, and the next generation grows up numb to how arbitrary it was.
I was recently helping a senior manager at a large company who felt utterly trapped by a difficult boss and relentless demands. She had convinced herself something was fundamentally wrong with her, and so she was doomed. That is the classic victim card; it can feel oddly comforting, and it keeps you stuck with no room to act. The moment she saw the meaning she was assigning, and that she could choose another, everything shifted.
So it comes down to three things. Life is fundamentally empty and meaningless. All suffering arises from the meaning you attach to events. And you have the power to invent new meaning. Here is your call to action, then: check in with yourself. What meaning are you making here, and does it empower you or disempower you? If it no longer serves, create a new one, and watch your world change. It is all empty by default, so why not stand for something that sets you free?
With care,Saqib