I've escaped my own void well enough to now set my eyes upon the collective sphere. In the few brief moments of my own reprise in the past I have noticed the same pattern which continues to feel stronger and weigh heavier on my heart today. We are lost and clawing. Literally reaching out to anything that can fill the subtle void felt within, such subtlety in fact that it remains unnamed and unidentified on the world stage. We are living in an pandemic of the soul. The illness of human nature has festered so long we cannot even see it through our own diseased eyes. It remains like a ghost within all of us, its deathly fingers gripped around our throats, closing the eyes and choking the heart. I feel that we are closer than ever to an armageddon, one that is anticipated by the body in such a way we are subliminally expecting something momentous to happen at any moment. Perhaps I am cynical, and blinded by the fore and hindsight that has caused every generation before to proclaim the evilness of the latest one. I hope so.

I've known the longing and grasping to be true though. If it were not we would have no need for influencers, fast fashion, generative AI, and dating apps. Each one of these things is used in a way that attempts to find ones own standing in the world. We look to others to see what we should become. I'm not sure if any generation before was more confused about who they are or what they are supposed to do; we are human enough to sense the call of individuality, but are too blind to know how to answer it. In a world where infinite possibilities of existence are displayed to each of us in the form of fleeting 60 second long visual clips, the path to the Self has never been so veiled. As if there are a million signs telling us where to go, but all are going in a different direction. We search every venue outside of ourselves in attempt to find something we cannot even name, something that we do not even know exists. We fantasize of one day attaining the perfect partner; someone who turns us into the version of ourselves we've always felt existed, that we've been trying to create all our lives. And with this person we'll attain the unconditional love from the individual, and the adoration from the collective that we've always desired and felt we deserved. We will become whole again. The whole world is a stage for this exact play and we are more than happy to continue participating in our own roles. We subconsciously believe that the one thing that can redeem us, that can save our souls can only be found outside of ourselves. We could not be further from the truth. I am not often in the habit of quoting the Bible, however, I feel I finally understand Jesus' words when he said “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”. 

The methods described above are the routes taken most often by the privileged to satiate the void. Those of us who remain deeply sensitive to the state of our souls and without support or connection often end up contributing to the astounding addiction and overdose rates. Cycles of addiction are not due to an amoral person, but due to a need to attain a state of being that one knows nothing of achieving outside of the vice. There is no common myth, story, or visualization in modern times that teaches us of the exact thing we can sense we lack, but cannot get a finger on. There is no pamphlet telling us why we feel so empty, so broken, so unknown and untouched. We can only achieve fleeting moments of purity and ecstasy through our vices, and if it is not a drug, it is a person, it is work, it is food, it is television, social media, religion, or sex; for despair and seeking have many faces. I cannot go a day without seeing it's devilish grin, or the monstrous teeth. Our dependance on outside sources for validation and security is blinding.

I have thus far spoken of despair, however, there is light too. I know this from my own hands strengthened from pulling myself out of my own depression, my own pit of loneliness. I searched for the bottom for almost a decade. Through the contractions of my own suffering came forth a birth of a higher Self, the very thing that I now recognize to be the source of the feeling searched for endlessly in the external world. However, the very fire that forged the Self is difficult to go through, even if you know it is your task. And yet the thing about the modern existence is that this task is never spoken of, it remains unknown to many of us despite it being the only way. No two journeys look alike and the answers cannot be found anywhere outside of your own knowledge and experiences. It is yours uniquely. I know not what else to write now, so I shall leave it at this; there is a way for humanity to regroup and heal, however, its destiny is contingent on each one of us finding our own way, in our own way.