Emptiness

All I want is a clean life. An empty, clean, blank, pristine life. I hate junk, I hate clutter, I hate knick-knacks and photo frames and inspirational quotes on wooden plaques-- and yet I can’t help but acquire these things, and by acquiring them, let them affect my peace with their plastic sensibilities.

We live these huge messy lives. We always want more, even if at the core of our beings, we know what we really need is less.

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I was reading a little bit in the library yesterday. I was looking for photographs of Elvis and somehow instead ended up in the Humour/Meaning of Life section of the stacks. I found a book by Eric Hoffer (author of The True Believer, a book on the causes of social fanaticism, which was given to me to read by my grade 12 English teacher, Mr. Snyder). This book was The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms . I only read a little bit, but was struck by the idea that passion is the desire to fill a void in ourselves; and that often obtaining the item of our passions is not sufficient to fill that void. That the expression of passion is, in fact, the expression of an enormous, gaping emptiness.

It made me feel good, because I have always felt that there was something wrong with me, simply because I lacked passion—for anything in life. There is no One Thing that makes my heart leap or my soul move. I thought that, being passionless, I would also be directionless, without success or recognition. I realize now that it has only been my own feelings of disappointment in myself that have ever slowed me down or prevented me from achieving marvelous things. I don’t need passion. I need faith in myself.

I don’t need any more than that.

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