Making Peace with the Human Void: Why That Empty Feeling Isn't a Problem to Fix
There's a particular kind of longing that shows up even when my life is good. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is happening. And still — something feels missing. A low hum of restlessness, the sense that I forgot something, that there's supposed to be more. This is the human void, and every healthy person carries it. Even small children.
In this episode, I walk through how different traditions have tried to explain that empty place inside us — and what happens when we stop trying to fill it. Buddhism names it dukkha, the dissatisfaction that shadows even good experiences because we know they won't last, and asks us to observe it without resistance. Camus called it the Absurd: the collision between our hunger for meaning and a universe that stays silent. His answer wasn't despair or invented comfort, but absurd freedom — living defiantly, fully, and authentically anyway.
Mormonism offered its own framing: the void as homesickness for heavenly parents, a memory of wholeness we can't quite recall. Comforting, in a way — it gives the feeling a direction and a meaning. But that's not how I experienced it. For me, the void registered as something is wrong with me. I'm not repenting enough. I don't have the spirit. I'm probably the only one who feels this way. The emptiness became evidence of personal failure, and the failure became shame.
The coaching lens reframes all of it. The void is the lower brain doing its survival job — scanning for threat, reading emotional discomfort as danger, driving us toward the candy aisle, the phone, the drink, the busyness, anything to make the bad feeling stop. But here's the misfire: in modern life, feeling bad is almost never a survival emergency. The feeling itself was never dangerous. What hurts us and the people around us is what we do to escape it.
So how do we solve the void? We don't. I make the case that the relief isn't in fixing the emptiness but in understanding it's universal, normal, maybe even purposeful — the engine that pushes us to grow, make, and reach. I close with the practices that help me: naming the void, stopping the search for the thing that will finally fix me, releasing the people I love from the impossible job of filling it, getting comfortable with ambiguity, and paying attention to the ordinary moments when — singing along to a light show in a language that isn't mine, watching my kids light up at a boatful of monkeys, lying in a quiet house with everyone home and safe — everything, right now, is okay.
I was taught the missing feeling meant something had gone wrong. It never did. It just meant I was alive.
In this episode:
- What the human void is and why every healthy person has one
- How Buddhism (dukkha), Camus (the Absurd), and Mormon doctrine each explain the empty place inside us
- Why the void often registered as shame inside a high-control religious framework
- The lower brain's survival wiring and why it misreads emotional discomfort as danger
- Why the feeling itself is never the threat — the escape behaviors are
- Practical ways to live in response to the void instead of burying it
- The role of presence and ordinary moments of "everything is okay right now"
A note: this episode discusses the universal experience of emptiness and restlessness, which is distinct from clinical depression or other conditions that deserve professional support. If the emptiness you feel is persistent, heavy, or interfering with your life, please reach out to a qualified professional.
