Freedom and Void

Since last year I’ve been preoccupied with my unusually prolonged coming of age. One night as I was chatting with a close friend, an insight came to me that I’d been focusing on the wrong problem, the wrong direction. It seemed that the thought came out of nowhere since we were talking about something unrelated.  At that short moment my belief (that career matters) was truly challenged by the simple question: “what if it does not matter?”

That moment I felt a sense of relief from the burden of my beliefs (of what it means to be a responsible adult). It was subtle, there was no heavenly choir singing gloriously, but it was a relief, a breaking of a chain. I fear giving it too much emphasis or importance because very soon after that, the freedom leaves a space … for nothing. A void. Freedom to do what? What do I do with/in this free space then? I still feel an immense lack of something. “Loving others and getting love from others,” I thought at the time, inspired by the fact that the insight came as I was talking to a good friend. The insight that job and career (and, as it turned out, much more) may not matter was not freeing. A bigger, more threatening void loomed. It brought fear, intractable dissatisfaction, and the worry-thought that I should care about some adult thing, and if I don’t I’m leading myself towards death. Only people, friends and family, matter, I thought. But don’t I have to do something a little more important-looking than just exchanging love?