Emptiness

I came across an interesting definition of emptiness by Descartes in one of his philosophical writings. Emptiness, he thought, is the space which is not occupied by an expected substance. We could probably understand this concept better when we reflect on a glass of water. 

A glass of water can be full, half-filled or empty - depending on its water content. Of course in reality the glass can never be empty, since air would occupy its contents when there isn't water in it (We only expect water in the glass, not air). Similarly, when we talk about empty rooms, blank sheet of paper, or empty stomach, we don't really mean that these are really devoid of any substances. We call something empty when it doesn't contain that thing we expect there to be.

What this means is that emptiness is just an illusion. There can never be any empty seats in the bus or any real space in the house - because there's always dust all around! But of course, what we really mean is that there are no other people in the bus or the house, and so we think that they are empty. In reality, there can never be empty space.

The same can be said about time. People say, "It's time for a break", "I need some free time","Time off". However, for the same reason that there is no empty space, there may not be any free time either, unfortunately. What we mean by free time is when we are not doing a certain activity that we are expected to. It is not total freedom from all activities, since we must be doing something during our free time - eating, resting, talking, or sleeping. No wonder then, when our days are filled with appointments and work (fully expected tasks), we find that we do not have any free time. 

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So don't despair if you ever feel an emptiness in your life. Never say, "I have no real friends, no real job, and an empty pocket". This is because, as what we have already discovered today, emptiness is an illusion. Of course something is empty if we don't find what we expect there to be present, even when there are lots of other things there. So, by simple adjustments to our expectations, we can remove (the thought of) a certain emptiness in our lives. 


Similarly, we can also create more emptiness when there isn't enough space - more space for a small house, more free time off work - by adjusting our expectations. Who needs a mansion, if its full of 'empty space'? How long, during our routine daily jobs, that we actually struggle or exert our mental or physical powers? In fact, most our (if boring) jobs are quite routine and at the end of the day, we get paid for a lot of 'free time'. No need to complain then.