Buddhism teaches that everything is empty in that it is deeply unsatisfactory. Any satisfaction we derive from something is temporary and we suffer because we delude ourselves into thinking this satisfaction will last when it won’t, experiencing pain when the truth inevitably reveals itself. Our tendency is to again and again think things both good and permanent, despite all our past experience suggesting otherwise.

Lately I have been feeling this emptiness keenly, and very much soaked in a sadness. When I feel happy my heart doesn’t truly sing as it used to, because I don’t trust the happiness. Buddhism would have me similarly distrust the sadness, but I don’t, and see it as very real and to be grappled with directly. I’ve still got a certain amount of philosophical idealism.

My late philosophy tutor Bob Hargrave told me that I have a powerful sadness within me that was, at the time, flaring up in the form of procrastination whenever I tried to get on with some work. He didn’t know what I was sad about, if anything, and it was just a case of the emotion being stuck and unable to flow through me as emotions should do. I still keep this possibility in mind. A more natural diagnosis is that I’m sad because I don’t have the purpose I once had. A sense of purpose from a religious cause, that orders the universe and assigns one work within it, is an incredibly powerful thing. It’s a trope from the movies. Someone is seen as incredibly dangerous because of his powerful belief in what he is trying to do. Quasi-religion will do too, as I had with my weird faith for academic philosophy. My holy texts were Phaedo, Apology and On Liberty.

I no longer have this faith and my feeling is that anything I might adopt in its place is a bunch of lies to be told to oneself. There a bunch of these on offer. The world religions, but I need not say anything about them. Self-improvement in our capitalist, consumerist world; make yourself financially free, have a gorgeous body, get good at entertaining people conversationally, and that’s supposed to be enough. There are other such faiths one can adopt. I can feel a temptation to formal, religious Buddhism but I know that it’d just be a case of running to another institution to cling to.

Buddhists would say that I should stop worrying about all this stuff, accept the lack of purpose and emptiness, and just have faith in the present moment, and my body and mind as is here right now. But the present moment is not only boring but greyed by the lack of purpose and I feel sad once more. Detach myself from my sadness, they would say, stop seeing it as noble and philosophically important. Since it’s temporary, it can’t possibly be those things.

So I try to build my own purpose by investing in myself. I’m actually reading a novel, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, which started really well but at around 35% through—reading an ebook—it’s taking a bit of a nose-dive as I can’t square the gravity of the situations the main characters find themselves in with their really lame dirty jokes. Maybe a cultural clash going on there. As well as this I sit down and I get on with reading some philosophy. But the energy isn’t there. I read the paper once and wonder what to do; try to break down the pieces and fit it together again, so I can feel like I’ve really understood what the author wanted most to say? Then my energy fails and I even feel the creeping old fears and insecurities about not being good enough at my subject, though I think it’s fair to say that those are just very old habits rather than anything more substantial (the Buddhists would relegate all my thoughts to this status).