Emily Post

edpost@umich.edu
LHSP 125.007
Paul Barron

The Inevitability of Emptiness

I think I first felt that feeling of something in ninth grade. Though seemingly

contradictory, it would be more accurate to call it a feeling of nothing. To this day,

almost 5 years after the fact, Im not quite sure what brought it about. I had friends; I
was doing fine in school; Looking back, it all seems pretty typical. This emptiness I felt
has been very on and off over the years. Sometimes it only lingers for a couple hours,
other times it stays for a couple days. Its a feeling that keeps appearing within me,
wherever I go.
Emptiness is a very abstract word. Its subjectivity leaves it with many meanings
wide open to interpretation. The article On Emptiness and Closeness by Dr. Thomas F.
Fogarty explores the reasons for the use of the word emptiness. He postulates that
essentially emptiness is an umbrella term used to acknowledge emotional states that
represent the absence of certain feelings (such as loneliness, fear, inadequacy, etc.). It
emphasizes the need for the space created by the absence of those emotions to be filled
once again by those emotions. To some, emptiness may refer only to the absence of
materials (generic content) within a physical space, like a room. In other, broader
situations, the word takes on a more emotional meaning. In these cases, emptiness can
increase even further in the realms of abstractness and subjectivity. The first instance
ponders the existence of an empty room. The second idea is more intrigued by the
notion of you, yourself being empty.

Its almost similar to that groggy feeling you get after a too long nap. All you want
to do is keep sleeping, or at least remain laying down. Its not the surface youre on. It
could be a comfy pillow, the flatness of a desk, but all that really matters is the weight of
your limbs and the heavy pit in your center. The feeling of lethargy is strong, but it
brings about a dangerous apathetic attitude toward the usual goings on of life. Apathy is
another word for emptiness that Ive encountered amongst my peers. I dont really
care. For some reason I find this phrase extremely disturbing. Its certainly not because
its unusual. On the contrary, I hear it all the time from my friend. It varies as a response
both to the mundane Do you want to watch a movie? and to the more serious How do
feel about politics? or Why do you think you dont want to develop that particular
relationship?. I think maybe it bothers me so much because I find it only too easy to
draw the connection to the bigger picture. Apathy has become somewhat of an epidemic
amongst my generation.

For a while it was the new cool trend to not care about anything, while secretly
caring very much about more artificial things. In her song Foolish Games, Jewel sings
You were fashionably sensitive/But too cool to care./You stood in my doorway, with
nothing to say/Besides some comment on the weather. This verse exemplifies that
cooly apathetic attitude. Throughout the past fifty years weve seen a lot of focus on just
that sort of cool guy, most notably James Dean, and his characteristic sex appeal and
animal magnetism. However now, I think its become more of a problem of people not
caring because effort. Thats another thing my friend says. In that way, people would
rather not care because if they did actually care then they might feel obligated to actually
try to do something about it. I feel a lot like my friend, and others of the same mind,
choose(s) apathy because its the easier option. Ive had similar feelings in the past, as
well.
I wrote a poem a couple years ago which, on the surface, was discussing the
futility of fixing a lone pothole on a road. However when writing it, I intended the
meaning to go deeper. I wanted to skim the surface of topics such as monotony and
sameness, emptiness and apathy. Its called Rut:
Consider
a pothole in the road, murky
stagnant
lifeless
liquid fills its shell.
Day by Day by Day
run over with hardly a start
by the offender-just another queer blemish
on the path frequently traveled.
Loud tar comes to fix
(patch-cover-flatten-hide...fill)
humanity's hole-a brief relieved dread to be normal
level
in a stony void--

knowing that eventually

Day by Day by Day
its true essence is restored:
an apathetic schism on a smooth surface.
The schism (pothole) is apathetic because it disregards the routinized maintenance of
the road. It will always come back. There will always be an imperfect blip on the surface.
Of course thats all very nice to posit, but these ideas are hardly concrete--or focused.
Im so intent on trying to show apathy as a version of emptiness because its one of those
real emotions that describes the absence of another. Im going to bring up Dr. Fogarty
again, because in his article he mentions related emotions from some of his patients in
his private practice as a therapist.
"I realize now that I can't run from the problems around, and inside me. I feel
apathetic, without interest in anything. It's the same thing every day. I have no
enthusiasm for anything. I used to get zest for living from others or even provide it
myself, but that no longer works. I am bored, and I feel like my self is dying. I find it
hard to concentrate and need a good fight to survive. I have a sense that I'm getting
older and that so little time is left. The more I think about it, the more depressing it gets.
I feel lifeless, a tired feeling like I never had before.

Dr. Fogarty chose to head this confession with Emotional Death. In a discussion of
emptiness, this really mixes apathy into the conversation. I think that the two words
apathy and emptiness are really beginning to blur together in this generation. To get
here however, there has been a systematic conditioning of the populous. In his novel
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates writes on apathy: It's a disease. Nobody thinks or
feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own
comfortable little God damn mediocrity. Written in the setting of the 1950s and
published in the early 60s, this set the normalization of the apathetic attitude. But it
really is more than apathy. Emptiness is often the chosen word because it accentuates all
of the other emotions that accompany apathy.

Due to the normalization of emptiness, because of the sheer commonality it

represents, its important to understand the emotion. Once it is understood as an
inevitability, it can be responded to as such. Woody Allen once said The artist's job is
not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence. This
quote shows emptiness as a creative inspiration for art. Its important to acknowledge
emptiness in this way because it removes some of its original negativity and open it up
to possibility. In that way, acknowledging the existence of emptiness in general within
all of us is important as well. Acknowledging the commonality helps us find our
humanity, and find the qualities that we share as humans. If we realize that we are all
capable of feeling that empty despair, then we are one step closer to achieving empathy
and understanding between us all. D.T. Suzuki said Emptiness which is conceptually
liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite
possibilities. This quote beautifully summarizes my point. A more physical, literal
example would be if you just bought your first house. It acts as an empty canvas for how
you want to live. You are in charge of its design, with no limits from parents or
landlords. The empty can be filled with furniture and art, technology, or you can choose
to leave it minimal. Infinite possibilities.

Emptiness can also take on a more positive perspective through other cultural
lenses. For example, different sects of Buddhism teach emptiness as a critical teaching. I
actually found an explanation of how emptiness can be fullness in a blog post written by
Sean Gardner. Within the post, he acknowledges the common western view on
emptiness then explores how emptiness is seen by both the Theravada and Mahayana
traditions of Buddhism. He explains In Buddhist teachings, emptiness is a
characteristic of phenomena arising from the Buddhas observation that nothing
possesses an essential, enduring identity. The realization of the emptiness of
phenomena is an aspect of the cultivation of insight that leads to wisdom and inner
peace. Hes saying that life is empty of an absolute identity because everything in life
has a certain interconnectivity and dependency on one another. A parallel can be drawn
between Western and Buddhist perspectives of emptiness when we look at the
synonyms we use. The Mahayana tradition calls emptiness what it is, but Theravada
Buddhists use it interchangeably with impermanence or selflessness. In this way it is
similar to the way Western ideology uses emptiness as an umbrella term for words
signifying absence of other emotions. Where each word can be used to detail a specific
essence of the emptiness as it relates to a person specifically, emptiness is the common
thread which links them all and thus which we all use in tandem.

Its interesting to compare the two perspectives side by side. In common Western
thought emptiness is associated with the negative feelings of sadness and loneliness.
However Buddhism uses emptiness to combine everything into mass identity. Though
its true that in Western thought if you believe that every person is capable of emptiness
a certain commonality arises, it is more of a stretch than the immediacy found in
Buddhist teachings. I think it is the open acceptance of emptiness as an inevitable fact of
life that allows for the more positive connotation. If we are empty, but can feel empty
together, then its far easier to deal with the bad feelings.
Emptiness is inevitable because its something that we are all capable of.
Murphys Law is usually stated Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. However,
in the recent film Interstellar, Matthew McConaugheys character plays the optimist and
rephrases the Law. Anything that can happen, will happen. By choosing to say
happen instead of go wrong, McConaugheys character accepts that the events dont
necessarily need to be negative. This same optimistic view can be applied to many facets
of life, including emptiness. We all as humans are capable of feeling empty. However,
depending on the art we create or consume, the people we meet or know, and how we
reflect upon our own emptiness, we are also capable of overcoming that emptiness and
keeping it from consuming us. The key to dealing with emptiness is acknowledgement,
acceptance, community, and reflection.

Reflection is probably the hardest part of any work. I have acknowledged my

emptiness and accepted it as inevitable, I have even built a supportive community
around myself. But try as I might, I cannot seem to find any one cause for my emptiness.
I have a good family, great friends. Im able to express myself freely and can also feel
free to chase my dreams and do what I want in life. There was a time when I felt
ashamed for feeling empty from time to time because of the generally great life that Ive
had so far. However, knowing that its a feeling anyone and everyone can have does help
the situation seem less angsty. Also, knowing emptiness as a community experience
makes me more open to seeking help for my problems from my friends and family.
Overall, emptiness can be a very horrible apathetic, lonely, sad, etc. sort of feeling. Its a
noted absence. However, thinking of it as an experience within a community helps it feel
like far less of a solitary issue, and therefore far easier to get through.

Works Cited
Fogarty, Thomas F. "On Emptiness and Closeness." Journal of Pastoral Counseling 35
(2000): 5. Academic OneFile. Web. 10 Dec. 2014.
Gardner, Sean. "What Do You Mean Emptiness Is a Good Thing?" Web log post. Spirit
of Rebellion. Wordpress, 22 Nov. 2010. Web. 13 Dec. 2014.
Kilcher, Jewel. Foolish Games. Jewel. Peter Collin, 1997. MP3.
"Quotes About Apathy." Goodreads. Goodreads Inc, 2014. Web. 13 Dec. 2014.
<https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag?utf8=%E2%9C%93&id=apathy>.
"Quotes About Emptiness." Goodreads. Goodreads Inc, 2014. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
<https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/emptiness>.