Have you ever felt exhausted by the efforts of a simple smile? The experience we call life is a dynamic one filled with all manner of joys and disappointments with such range that it is impossible to experience all that can be in a single lifetime. Still, we try our best to fulfill our limited existence in this particular arrangement we call ‘I’ because we are driven to finding what is good about the chance occurrence of our birth. Inherently there is nothing in this longing but the mere perception of wanting more for its own sake which often harbours the truth that we know we are not enough.

The 21st century’s primary curse is the amplification and globalization of this longing. Each day we cross the path of something outside of ourselves that we wish to consume (media ensures this). We also come to often see people just as complex as we are as extensions of our desires to have our needs met, as we do in wanting to possess an object or an animal for the same purpose. As a grotesque being of desire we wish to make all that is not us an inseparable part of us, for we have led ourselves to believe that we are too little of what can be reconciled as the Self. This illness of external ‘joys’ – as we perceive them- is the true plague of this millennium for we have lost ourselves in what we seek, rather than seeking ourselves in what we have.

I find myself reflecting on this troubling issue late at night quite often as it has infected my mind just as it has countless other damned souls who lye awake at night wondering how could the gift of life be so wonderful while all the while being such a heavy burden to carry. This infection of spirit, and make no mistake it is indeed so, turns the spirit black and heavy as a black hole in space – twisting its nature to one that consumes and devours. Rather than radiating our light, the illness takes our spirit ever deeper inside to a place that it can never hope to escape whilst it hungers still for all that approaches it – pulling all within reach to be smothered by our inescapable needs while making its pull stronger and its darkness ever greater.

As passing joys are drawn near, they shine brightly and turn about us as they radiate their light – making us visible and beautiful. For a time our form is defined by this light making us not only beautiful, but powerful as we begin to draw the light inward to fuel our growth. The process is just as it is with the spacial counterpart. For a brief period all around marvel at us, but just as we attained this we soon begin to draw the light in further, wanting to keep this beautiful thing that is not us. We have mistaken the external light as what defines us. Then, as soon as it began to dance around us, the light vanishes into our depths as we have now smothered it forever in our inescapable greed. We are now once again an invisible but deadly energy awaiting our next victim that will once again briefly give us the chance to shine and to be admired.

Does such a parallel disturb you? If it doesn’t, it should. We all carry the potential to become like the black hole for we are composed of the same fundamental energy. Both life and black holes are born of dead stars. If the laws of physics can ensure both beauty and destruction on this scale, so too can they ensure them for our lives.

Now, to a much more difficult question. How do we avoid becoming a being devoid of consciousness which devours its surroundings?

There is no absolute answer to this question as just as we know so little about black holes, so is the case that we know so little about the meaning of life and death. We know they exist, but to define the happening of them as having some sort of higher purpose is all but impossible. We may assign values and beliefs as we choose to believe them, but these are subjective speculations that don’t do much in finding the truth aside from assuming that there must be one. They are all normal as are desires for joy and happiness yet the reasons for them are unknown because wanting something and understanding why it exists are entirely different issues to work out.

There have been countless teachers and schools of thought throughout human history that all seek to answer the question of what it means to be happy and complete without want for what is around us, but none have done more than reframe questions and metaphor that those who study and practice are left largely to work the answers out for themselves with whatever tools have been provided within the confines of the teachings presented. Among the most common of these is the assertion that the meaning of life, death, sorrow and happiness are simply to experience them as they are without needing to try to understand them.

This is perhaps meant to help people simply move on from the question altogether so that life and happiness aren’t wasted in unverifiable inquiry. That could ultimately be for the best. A life spent in agony over trying to analyze its role in making us happy is no life at all, yet we still can’t help but go there and try to find external answers to this deep internal problem.

With this limited range of considerations we are left with, at best, a muddled attempt at defining what it means to want so much as to collapse into ourselves as we drain the world around us of its light. How now do we best build a life that will not leave us alone in the dark?