The Paradox of Emptiness

My philosophy professor for almost three years, who happens to be a philosopher too, used to always ask the following question “does emptiness exist? And if it does exist then why did we name it emptiness?”

The question seemed both fascinating and absurd to me at the same time back then, do philosophers only enjoy asking ludicrously foolish questions using fancy words to seem relevant? Or was there some sort of hidden wisdom behind that question?

But the more I thought about it, if emptiness was defined, physically; by an absence of matter and metaphysically; by an absence of substance may be, naming something "emptiness" acknowledges it within the framework and spectrum of language and thus existence, which feels contradictory and imposes its existence by force.

I remember being into physics back then and while I was doing some readings I found out the existence of a concept explored in mid-20th century named “zero point energy”, which refers to, basically and most vulgarly since I am not a physicist (sadly), as an intrinsic property of quantum entities or fields and states that the absence of energy is non-existent, that a remaining energy is always fluctuating, present and cannot be eliminated, demonstrating that even what we refer to as empty spaces (or what is referred to more fancily as “vacuum”) are not truly empty.

This discovery made my professor’s question seem more legitimate and reasonable, materialistically speaking at least.

The boycott was getting too long and everlasting I thought it would never end and it was beginning to be hard to visualize a life before it happened, because it seemed so far and so hazy. Anyone who would hear me talk about would think I was going through war, and it is not because I lack resilience what so ever that I say this, but it quite literally was a psychological war and every day felt like two.

At the beginning it was all fun and games, I thought it would last a month or two, and I had promised myself in the past after Covid that if a quarantine ever happens again I would use that time more efficiently, and so the boycott gave me the same vibe of a quarantine and the first thing I did was to try and honour my promise, I started by watching all the old French and American movies with the charming Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot, Hedy Lamarr and Elizabeth Taylor, I enrolled in yoga and Pilates classes and gotten back to lifting weights in the gym. I bought a ton of new books and got out all the books I have forgotten their stories to read them again. I went on Coursera and selected a bunch of courses that seemed interesting. And I also thought to myself I would have a lot of time to share lots of new essays.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this in the past because I never bother reading any of my old essays to see if I did, but if a holiday exceeds 15 days then I starting spiralling and losing the little of a sane mind I think I have.

But somehow I managed to keep my sanity for almost two months during this boycott, although a persistent permanent anxiety was overwhelming me even before it started because I had a feeling that this boycott was not coming only to go quickly or to visit us briefly.

After a while, nothing fun was fun anymore, not the late nights watching a good movie, not the great books I had the time to read all the time and even the essays I wrote seemed so mundane and un-sharable to me and I felt like I have forgotten to write. The yoga classes started to feel silly, going to a café to bath in the sun and write or read felt tasteless and just like another thing to do. I also watched Gilmore girls again, and I love how my perception of every character changes every time I watch it, like right now, through a Rory perception and point of view, I don’t really dislike Dean anymore for her (but I definitely judge him very severely for what he did to Lindsay). I don’t really understand the hype about teenager Jess anymore and I most definitely think that Logan’s charm resides only in his wealth (which I don’t really think is necessarily a bad thing but still debate on it with myself).

I don’t judge Rory for dropping out of Yale anymore, I obviously still judge her for her serial cheating habits. I think Lorelai was a very selfish person in all of her relationships and that she was messy and all over the place, and that every partner of hers had to pay for her confusion and emotional instability and that her quirkiness was actually very annoying. Emily just wanted to bring out the best out of every person in her family, she wanted everyone to live up to their full potential and although she did make some mistakes, she has had many iconic moments. Luke was actually insufferable and Christopher is a character I will never speak of because every time he appears on my screen I don’t even know what goes on in my brain due to my passionate hate for him.

Life felt empty. Every day was just another passing day, and I hated having to confront myself with the idea that I have been lead into the scam of doing medicine in this country.

I used to always think that if you want to make money then major in something else other than medicine, so I most definitely didn’t choose my future career based on financial reasons, but god oh god, what the boycott has made me go through, made me recalculate and get to the conclusion that I have been the joke of the century because this field was not fulfilling to me neither financially nor emotionally anymore.

First of all, it hit me so hard (along with everyone) how we have been treated by the government, secondly, it hit me how much I will have to deal with people to start with, even more, it hit me even harder that the people I will have to deal with are the same ones that were hating on us in every comment section of every post related to us.

With all true honesty, I feel like I had more potential which I directed through the wrong field of studies, and many times, has gotten back to me the little 10 years old me who dreamed of being an astrophysicist and used Google translate to translate her little emails from French to English to send them to the University of Texas and MIT, asking them how to apply because I wanted to be prepared in advanced.

I thought about my modest very humble social skills and thought to myself that I would have probably done better in an office corporate job where I don’t have to really be compassionate and empathic the whole time. I thought that I fumbled law school.

I thought that I wanted to be a marine biologist but I can’t even swim, and I am sure that even my supportive parents would have thought I had an aneurysm if I pitched this idea to them.

I thought of how I dreamed of being a journalist for a while.

During this boycott, I had thought of being everything but a doctor. Anything seemed better than being a doctor, because everyone’s life outside of this field seemed to be progressing and going towards something, everyone other than us seemed to have a direction, a meaning and a purpose while we were rotting and stagnating.

I couldn’t believe that I came back from Montpellier and gave my spot up in Dakar to study here. And all the ifs and what ifs rushed into me all at once at the same time all the time every day. I don’t really regret the past, I truly believe that you never miss something that is destined to you, and that is a reason I never gatekeep or engage in any dirty dishonest competitions or reminisce about the past a lot but emptiness drags you to the lowest of places and makes you engage with even the worst of habits.

Through my alleged emptiness out of nowhere during a phone call, I remembered my philosophy professor and his famous question, I had thought of how I tried to make sense out of it in a physical way,  but what did it imply metaphysically? And did it have some sort of philosophical consequences? Could I make sense out of what was happening right now? Because nothing seemed to have sense, and everything seemed to happen for the wrong reason if not for no absolute reason.

Genuinely, with no intention of romanticizing the boycott, because it was not a movie or a book in which everything ends beautifully and in which an event or a thought happens and you feel like it is a revolutionary one and that everything now is okay and all is forgotten and that what ends well is all well, or that a moment of realisation pays for everything that has happened, I think this whole experience has moulded me into somehow a different, dare I say a better person. I had a lot of unresolved issues with myself, with other people and with some things and I feel like I was becoming, in a certain phase of my life that coincidences with the pre boycott era, an angry overly sensitive bitter toxic insufferable person, and  since I only had time in my hands, I found myself addressing each and every issue and made it my ultimate duty to get closures with many unresolved issues I had, whether through hard goodbyes I thought would never happen, or very awkward difficult conversations, acceptance to things I thought I could change and letting go of things that even if I could change, were not really worth the hustle.

Change is inevitable, and sometimes comes in the most random unexpected times, times that feel wrong, because it shakes to the core everything we built as solid facts and looked at as strong foundations, it feeds with uncertainty everything we thought of as constant, and poisons our sense of control, it is threatening and uncomfortable because it comes with lots of questions and little to no answers.

I don’t even remember what it was that got me thinking if my emptiness was, indeed, an extension of the absurdity of the term and a manifestation of its contradictory implications?

After I had done the uncomfortable talks, made peace with some goodbyes and let go of unnecessary burdens I have carried faithfully but needlessly, I thought to myself in a split of a moment if my emptiness was may be a presence of pure potential and a fertile state for positive change.

Without this so called “emptiness” could I have achieved any of the little peace I feel right now or discovered any of the new paths I hope to redirect myself toward in the future?

May be the inherent constitutional properties of quantum structures are concepts that mirror our lives, and just as zero point energy argues that empty space is never truly empty or existent, the moments of emptiness we experience in life are not devoid of meaning or possibility, they are simply awaiting activation and that the potential for change is ever lasting, a threshold to new identities and ways of thinking.

It came to me very late, nearly at the end of the boycott before I even knew that it was about to be the end, that the absence of clear answers does not signify failure, but rather the beginning of an on-going process of becoming, that the experience of feeling empty and of questioning the meaning of existence is not unique to me; it is a part of the human condition.

Perhaps, what makes the so called emptiness a common experience between the smallest to the biggest of concepts in this existence, and a universal one as well, is the uncertainty we encounter in different forms along the way as it reflects the ambiguity of life itself.

Emptiness, it seems, is not the end or the absence of anything, but a potential to create, to connect and to rebuild, a catalyst to infinite reactions that lead to infinite possibilities. However, although it had lead me to a good place, I won’t claim that this experience had to happen this way for me to learn, it wasn’t a neatly packaged lesson, but then what is in this life.