IBIS: Starng Into the Void
Over the holidays, I had several conversations that stayed with me long after they ended. I spoke with different people, living very different lives, yet beneath each exchange lingered the same quiet question: Is this all there is? Those conversations led me to think more deeply about emptiness, and about how easily it is misunderstood.
We are born as empty vessels, not deficient but open, waiting to be shaped by experience. While the news often focuses on childhoods marked by trauma, most of us grow up in homes that are loving, stable, and quietly nurturing. As infants, we learn to signal hunger and comfort, warmth and fear. We laugh at silly faces and fall asleep in familiar arms. Curiosity pulls us forward—first crawling, then walking—opening our minds to an ever-widening world. We ask endless questions, and each answer expands our sense of what is possible. Over time, our lives fill slowly, piece by piece, guided by parents and relatives toward school, careers, relationships, and the versions of success our culture values most.
I was fortunate to grow up in a loving extended family. What I value most from that time was not security or achievement, but the nurturing of my curiosity. My parents did not treat my questions as nuisances. Instead, they encouraged them. That early permission to wonder still shapes how I experience the world. I do not experience the open space inside myself as emptiness, but as a room that allows for new ideas, new explorations, and new ways of seeing.
Of the people I counsel, a great many experience their inner space very differently. On paper, their lives look complete: education, careers, homes, families. Yet they describe a hollowness they struggle to name. It is not exactly sadness. It is more a sense that life has lost its texture and meaning, that they are going through the motions without feeling fully present. The question their thoughts circle when alone is unsettling in its simplicity: Is this all there is?
This feeling often emerges during times of change. It can surface after a marriage ends, when children leave home, or when retirement arrives without a clear next chapter. It also appears when work or daily life becomes repetitive and uninspiring. Outwardly, everything looks fine, but inwardly, there is fatigue and disconnection. Meaning rarely announces its absence loudly. It tends to fade quietly, and that quiet can be dangerous.
Psychologist Muhammad Tuhin offers a helpful perspective: “Emptiness isn’t a sign of failure. It’s often the product of living according to someone else’s definition of success.” In a culture shaped by visibility and performance, it is easy to confuse appearing fulfilled with actually being fulfilled. Emptiness, then, may have less to do with lack than with misalignment—the growing distance between who we are and who we have learned to present to the world.
I saw this clearly while managing a “Do You Need a Mother?” booth at a summer music festival. Many visitors in their forties and fifties spoke candidly about losing their sense of purpose. Some had left lucrative careers to search for meaning through travel. When they returned, however, they were unwilling to step into lower-paying work that felt more aligned with their values. Still shaped by an early definition of success that equated worth with income, they found themselves struggling financially and emotionally, uncertain how to move forward. Their search for meaning remained unresolved.
What struck me was not their failure, but their honesty. In these moments, emptiness was not an endpoint but a signal. Though the hollowness they felt suggested it was time to move on, they had not yet discovered where to go next.
Emptiness has little to do with financial circumstances, yet once it takes hold, it can be difficult to escape. The only real option is to pay attention to the space it creates, because that space can become an opening through which curiosity returns. At first, this curiosity may be small and unimpressive, taking the form of questions without immediate answers or interests that do not earn approval. Life’s meaning usually reemerges quietly.
For some, it returns through time spent in nature. For others, it is rekindled through cooking, art, music, or helping someone else. Meaning rarely arrives fully formed. More often, it grows through attention.
Curiosity requires energy to survive. Movement, rest, connection, and reflection all matter. So does noticing what brings warmth or light into an ordinary week and allowing that to shine through the darkness. It was not until I retired that I took writing seriously. I had to consider what I wanted to say and why I wanted to say it. My neco-thriller, Antheia in the Thorns, which explores corporate environmental crime, is about to be published, and a third novel is currently being edited. Writing did not eliminate emptiness for me. Instead, it transformed it into spaciousness.
When emptiness begins to soften, it often gives way to a sense of freedom. The pressure to become someone new diminishes, leaving room to become more fully you. Emptiness is not a broken state. It can be energizing to realize that, at any age, you are still unfinished, with more life yet to explore.
Have you ever been plagued with emptiness? How did you overcome it? yourself—and more of life—waiting to be explored. I look forward to your comments on my blog site at https://www.eichingerfineart.com/blog/204492/feeling-empty-while-having-it-all
Art is always for sale. Ibis can be purchased on my website by going to https://www.eichingerfineart.com/workszoom/6373371/ibis#/ Questions” Contact me at marilynne@eichngerfineart.com
For information about my books, click on my author’s website at https://www.secretsofamuseumjunkie.com
References:
Scottie, (2025) The True Peri: Emptiness, Not Sadness. NW Survival Magazine. zRetrieved from https://www.nwsurvival.us/2025/10/31/emptiness-not-sadness/
Tuhin, M. (2025). Why We Feel Empty Even When Life Looks Full. Science News Today. Retrieved from https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/why-we-feel-empty-even-when-life-looks-full
