A quiet meditation on desire, emptiness, and the space ego occupies in our lives.
My kids are away on vacation.
They’re coming back tomorrow.
Today, I cleaned the house. Rearranged a few things, folded laundry, made space for their return.
And somewhere between folding a blanket and wiping down the kitchen counter, a thought floated in:
What would happen if I wasn’t here tomorrow?
Not in a dramatic way. Not sad. Not anxious.
Just still.
And then, a deeper truth settled in:
If I’m still alive, it’s for them.
Not because I think my life is deeply meaningful in itself.
But because they exist. And for now, they still need me.
Maybe none of what we do on a daily basis really matters.
Maybe, as individual humans, we’re not that important.
Our thoughts, our ambitions, our emotional storms — all of it passes.
If we’re part of something vaster, something beyond what we can name, then why are we so afraid of emptiness?
Why this obsession with leaving a mark, being useful, being noticed?
What if we’re just souls passing through, inhabiting one form for a moment, before moving on to another?
If that’s the case, then who I am today isn’t permanent.
What I do today isn’t essential.
And somehow, that truth doesn’t disturb me. It calms me.
I’m not afraid of death. I don’t long for it either.
There’s no melancholy here. Just a quiet kind of clarity.
I simply don’t believe that any of this is that serious.
Sometimes I feel like a spectator.
Like I’m watching life more than I’m caught in it.
Maybe that’s why I see through systems so easily —
the roles we’re assigned, the stories we’re told.
It all looks like a well-rehearsed play. Everyone is performing with conviction.
And I find myself watching the scene thinking:
Maybe there’s another script. Maybe there’s a whole other stage elsewhere.
That doesn’t mean I reject life.
It just means I’m looking at it from a slightly different angle.
With distance. With what might be called extra-lucidity.
I’m not judging. I’m not trying to persuade anyone.
I’m just saying what I feel.
And what I feel, often, is that so much of what we do comes from one specific part of ourselves:
the ego.
The ego isn’t evil. It’s not a flaw.
It’s a function. A lens. A storyteller.
It gives shape to our identity and lets us feel like we’re someone.
It’s the voice that says, “I want,” “I deserve,” “I know better,” “I matter.”
It compares, it competes, it performs.
It even cries — not always out of true pain, but from the fear of vanishing.
The desire to have children, to succeed, to accumulate, to be seen — these aren’t bad things.
But they often start in the ego.
That part of us that can’t bear the idea of being nothing.
That clings to meaning. That needs to be central.
Even our tendency to judge people who choose to live differently (with less, or slower, or outside of ambition) comes from the ego.
Because if they can live that way, then maybe our own desires aren’t universal.
And that’s destabilizing.
The ego wants its way to be the way.
Because really, the ego’s job is to fill the empty space.
That deep, quiet space that shows up when there’s nothing urgent.
When the house is still.
When no one’s watching.
When there’s nothing to chase.
Without ego, we think we’ll dissolve.
And so we let it take over.
We give it the mic. We build our days around it.
Even when it exhausts us, we keep it close — because with it, at least, we feel real.
But sometimes, something breaks through.
There’s a pause. A softness. A flicker of something deeper.
And a voice inside says,
What if I’m not what I want? Not what I do? Not even what I believe?
What if I can just be here, without having to matter so much?
And in that moment, another space opens.
Less noisy. Less heavy.
An unclaimed space where nothing needs to happen.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s where we can finally exhale.
Where we can live not as performers, but as presence.
It’s not that serious.
It’s not disconnection.
It’s not nihilism.
It’s just another way of being with life —
when we stop believing everything rests on us.