Living With A Void In The Heart
Have you ever felt an emptiness in your heart? You may lead a normal, full and even happy life. You have what day by day helps you maintain a normal existence without excessive worries …
However, there is something that emerges suddenly in those moments when you look in the mirror and take that look inside yourself. There is something wrong, something that overwhelms you and surrounds you with a feeling halfway between sadness and despair.
It is a void in the heart. Sometimes it has the form of frustration, the relief of everything that you wished you had done or achieved and that, for whatever reason, could never be. It also often happens that said abyss in the heart has the silhouette of something or someone that you lost, but also, and it is something undeniable, said hole responds to an existential void that is difficult to translate into words.
Is this what life held for me? Is this all I really wanted for myself, or is something else waiting for me just around the corner? What is the real meaning of that dimension that we call “life”?
A void in the heart, a current problem
Perhaps when you hear the word “existential void,” you think of those people who take self-realization trips to India to find answers to those restless spirits. To those personalities who are looking for new experiences that give context to their personal and emotional needs.
But the dimension of the subject goes further. It is an emotional problem and even a true crisis of values where suddenly, everything begins to be questioned.
Previously we gave the example of people who lead apparently normal lives until one day a trigger arises that calls into question their placid existence. You may lose someone you love and those questions arise about the meaning of life, about why we are only brief passengers in a life that is sometimes too short.
The emptiness in the heart can also bear the name of that affective relationship that you could not maintain or that simply caused you too much damage to heal again. They are states that can turn into a stabbing and painful craving. We feel adrift, lost in a reality that is meaningless. Like in a book without letters.
Logotherapy, the meaning of life itself
There is a very interesting psychotherapeutic theory developed by a disciple of Freud called logotherapy. Its author, Viktor Frankl. This psychologist survived the holocaust and knew very well how that existential emptiness was split, that hole in the mind and the heart. How to trust the human being again after what happened in his life? He overcame it and helped many in the same situation.
His theoretical perspective was based on the idea that people need a daily motivation, a kind of “will to make sense” and a faith towards a better future where we can commit ourselves to some purpose. If we feel useful and motivated, we advance in that vital transcendence far from emptiness, far from the abyss of existential without knowing.
Meaning is what every human being seeks. There are people who, for example, are not clear about the purpose that motivates them, they forgot it in the past when, for example, they suffered that loss, that abandonment. That betrayal or that “without knowing.” They carry out their work, with their family, with their friends, letting themselves be carried away by automatic pilot… but something is wrong.
What can we do? How is meaning found? Logotherapy tells us that we must seek self-knowledge, expressiveness and creativity, we must know what values are those that identify us. It is essential that we find something to motivate ourselves every day, be brave, know how to smile, bring happiness to those around us. And continue to grow as people.
If you are afraid, you do not move forward. If you have doubts, look for the answers in yourself. Get motivated, transform your reality by putting anguish aside. The journey out of that emptiness in your heart can be an adventure worth living with all the intensity.
