What they fear is not idleness. What makes them insecure is the moments when they have nothing to cling to. It's when night falls, the phone goes silent, the fun is over, work is temporarily over and they have to sit down with themselves. People can endure hardship for a very long time. But not everyone is brave enough to face the silent questions in their hearts.
Therefore, when lonely, we rush to find someone to talk to. When insecure, we rush into making money. When we feel small, we try to own another title, an expensive item, or a few thousand likes on social media. We constantly fill our lives with countable things, hoping they will fill something nameless. But the void in the soul is not created by material or achievement deprivation. It appears when we lose connection with ourselves.
Psychologist Carl Jung once said that the most important journey of a person's life is the process of becoming oneself. That journey does not go outwards but back inwards. It is not a expedition to conquer the world, but the courage to step into the dark corners of the soul, where injuries, fears and fragility are still silently residing.
The paradox is that the more people try to fill, the more empty they sometimes feel. Because the deepest absences do not need to be covered. They need to be listened to. People come and go. New lands finally become familiar. Even the goals that once made us most eager, after being achieved, gradually lose their initial glory. If our self-worth is only built on those things, we will forever live in a state of waiting for confirmation from outside. A compliment makes us happy. A criticism makes us waver. And a small moment of silence is enough to make our hearts anxious.
Growing up is probably not about finding a new peak to conquer, nor about finding a perfect harbor to rely on. Growing up is when we stop asking the world to heal wounds that we ourselves have never dared to look straight at. It is when we can sit alone in a rainy afternoon, listening to the sound of time passing without feeling the need to run anywhere anymore.
There are things in life that do not need to be filled. Like the silence between two notes, it is that emptiness that creates the melody.
