Emptiness

Image Courtesy: http://wisdomquarterly.blogspot.com/

We are all actors. We are children, siblings, parents, friends, enemies, neighbors, boss, followers, leaders, heroes, villains….. In all of us, we contain a multitude of characters that we play out in the drama of life.  Our identity is the sum total of all these characters. In a way, we are all schizophrenic. These characters are the driving force of the lives of most of us. Our survival depends on the survival of these characters. To be a success, we should never break out of these characters. The society will cease to exist if we are not lost in the drama of life.  

What if everyone we love and care about suddenly disappears from the face of the earth? All of our characters will also disappear along with it. What would be left of us? Will we continue to live? I once read a book titled Man’s search for meaning, by Dr. Viktor Frankl. That was what happened to him when almost everyone in his family got killed in the concentration camps. However, all these terrors gave him a profound insight, that search for the meaning of life is the primary motivation for human survival. How do we find meaning?

In the large scheme of things, life is a big onion. Once we start peeling off layer after layers of ego that we have assumed, in the end, we will be left with emptiness. The whole universe is empty. So are galaxies, stellar systems, planets, atoms, and everything else.  We are connected to each other through emptiness.

Once the curtain fall, all characters will go back to the green room leaving the stage empty and clean for the next drama, new characters, and new audience.