Turn Something into Nothing

Often I find myself in a feeling of discontent. Whether it be anxiety, depression, sadness, or whatever other emotional distress restricts me from personal happiness. I used to have overwhelming thoughts followed by even more thought. Whether it was over feeling lonely, broken, or worthless. One thought would storm in after another, like a never ending tornado throwing my emotions in all sorts of directions. I used to try to kill this natural disaster with even more thought. I would try to figure out some sort of importance in life. I would search for some philosophical meaning to life, which would in turn make feel like I understand life, and thus make me feel as though I had some self-worth through this knowledge. By productively figuring life out I felt as though I was achieving something. However, I am still at a point in my life where I am constantly learning new things and finding different perspectives. I have come to the belief (at the moment) that it is not just that man is afraid of the unknown, but that no matter what we are always going to live in the unknown. Not just that man fears what he cannot understand, or that we come to improper conclusions because we are afraid to accept the possibility of nothingness, but that we also need to have something in our lives. Although we may live a universe with vast nothingness, we as people believe ourselves to be something. It provides us with worth, which then gives us the determination to strive and turn the nothing around us into something. By making it something we are making it known, and we do not have to be staring into a darkness that holds many mysteries.

Yet, no matter how many discoveries or realizations we come to, there will always be unknowns. The universe is ever expanding, there is no end to what lies in humanities potential. But, just as we strive to turn nothing into something, we must also accept that there will always be things we cannot understand. A new part of my philosophy towards mental or emotional discontent is to clear the mind. I used to observe the world around me and make grand discoveries about it, but I would not ever be able to make a grand conclusion on any of life's vague subjects. By looking up into space, I realized how little human society plays in the universal structure of life. By allowing myself to accept that we cannot know everything about existence, I was able to feel more comfortable with my own personal philosophy. I may still have emotional discontent, but it is no longer a problem of self-worth. Because worth is a completely made up idea, and we will never truly understand how it was brought about in human culture. But it has made an influence in our society. Life is filled with mysteries, you can do your best to find out where they come from and what they mean, but if you try to find everything you will miss the fact that nothingness allows us to have something. By not knowing things, we allow ourselves room to understand more. We cannot find more if there is nothing left to find.