What keeps us from the abyss, when life actually has no meaning?
The question is what do we want to allow to be greater than ourselves when faith, status, hedonism and all the other trappings have lost their power. Or what might be bigger than us with our fragmented egos. When you know the truth you will realise that even knowing the truth makes no difference. Knowing the truth doesn't change anything in life. Day by day, step by step.
Just be
Caught between the realisation of futility, the desire to make a difference and all those inner and outer distractions. Inside you are needy, outside you have possibilities. Every inner need finds its outer equivalent - status for narcissists, NGOs for do-gooders, ideologies for those who don’t want to or can’t think for themselves. And so on. The answer to this stuck existence? Just be. If only it were that simple!
Don’t lie to yourself!
Is it really the case that we owe all the things we can do to challenges we have mastered? There is the past, there is the future, in between is the now, being in the moment. If you lie to yourself, if you want to be something other than you are because you don’t like what you are, then you never live “here” or “now”, then you are always either in the past or in the future. We use each other, then we “need” or even “abuse” our loved ones, so that they prove to us that we are who we want to be. Isn’t the real challenge to face yourself? Or even me facing myself? And isn’t it easy to die when we have no more secrets from ourselves?
Want nothing
Life has no meaning in and of itself, but it is worth living if you acknowledge just that (paraphrased from Albert Camus). So life becomes a decision to live in spite of this abyss or in the face of it. The temporary bridge over this abyss is a task, an activity. Not restless activity, for restless are those who lie to themselves. But it is about humble activity, somehow wanting nothing. Humility is what makes the difference. "Just be," she said.
What makes the difference
Humility is expressed through the ability to recognise oneself in one's immediate “thrownness into existence”. Humility is what makes the difference. The difference itself is love. That is why those who have really confronted and consistently worked through their faith (in whatever God) end up with the concept of love - for other people, for nature. If you need proof, look into the face of a loved one or go into the forest and wait for the image to change. What is meant by this? Just wait. It doesn't work? Then wait longer.
Between the dungeon and the abyss
On one side, the dungeon of wanting to be someone else, to strive for status or recognition or anything else, just so you don’t have to realise who you actually are. On the other side, the abyss of realising that there is nothing there, no grand plan, no purpose. Just a favourable and at the same time hellish coincidence in an otherwise vast universe.
The other “last exit”
The way out is a narrow path made of three elements. In perhaps the first place is the decision to live nevertheless, to simply be and not want anything. Then it’s about an activity or a task - and here, at the latest, one may also want to make a difference, if it’s not just about being someone or being better than the others, in order to escape the hell of being average or even banal. And actually, “quite actually”, it is thirdly about love, whereby love is probably the one of the three elements that can be explained least or not at all.