In Empty Hands

I’ve spent much of my life trying to answer these two questions:

• “Who do I want to be?”
• “What do I really want?”

They are important questions. They shape ambition, values, and direction. They help construct a personally meaningful life. But neither is the most important question. It took me years to even consider the possibility of combining them, but this is what it looks like:

“What kind of person do I want to be, even if I never get what I want?”

This is the question that reveals who you are when life stops cooperating. What you hold close when everything else fights back. Who you want to be regardless of outcome. What kind of life you truly want to build, even if you never get to.

Empty Always

In the previous entry, Can’t Have It All, the premise was simple: choice is inevitable. No path gives you everything. Every path has a price. Wanting everything is just another way of avoiding commitment. But what happens when you do choose? When you take the difficult path, make the necessary sacrifices, learn many lessons, and still don’t get what you want? No payoff, no triumph, not even a fair sense of justice. You tried, over and over, and only ever failed. If your identity is built solely on achievement, what’s left if they slip permanently* out of reach? If your purpose depends on being seen, loved, recognized, or at least the proof that you’re growing, what do you do if it just consistently doesn’t materialize?

We like to imagine our desires as expressions of our inner truth, but often, they’re just guesses, hopes, or versions of ourselves we think will solve everything once we arrive. But desire itself is not sacred. It’s not always wise. It’s often informed by exposure, envy, fantasy, a narrow slice of possible realities, or simply biology doing its job. Wanting something doesn’t make it good. Getting it doesn’t make it right. The point isn’t to antagonize desire itself, but to understand that desire is fragile, and meaning is not meant to rely on something inherently unstable. There is a difference between what is important to you and what you desire. The longer you live, the more you’ll encounter loss, not just of things you never had, but of things you fought for, things that should have worked, and things that made perfect sense but somehow fell apart. The ones who remain sane, grounded, and fulfilled are not always the ones who win, but the ones who decided in advance what not getting it would turn them into.

The most frustrating part of existential navigation is that happiness and meaning are not directly intertwined. They operate independently, and often in conflict. They don’t arrive together, and they don’t answer to the same conditions. You can be happy, grateful, and content without being fulfilled. And you can be satisfied with everything you need while still feeling despondent. You can’t have it all, and sometimes you can’t have it at all. This is where people can start to lose themselves, speaking from experience. They become bitter, hard, distant, and cynical. They withdraw their sincerity because it seems nobody can take it seriously. They overrely on strength and reason because it becomes the only thing they can trust. They treat the world with the same cold indifference it seemed to show them. They fight against the world with the same passion they once used to pursue it. And they spend every waking moment clawing for answers while only believing the ones that validate them. Maybe they even write a Codex.

This resentment is not due to failure alone, but the consistent, repeated, and never-ending failure despite constant adaptation that makes a person lose their sanity. Worse, there is no end to this frustration. Every decision has trade-offs and every path comes with compromises. Some things you just can’t change no matter how hard you try, and some things you just can’t obtain because it means sacrificing something that matters more. It’s infuriating. But there is something you can do about it. What does it mean to be the kind of person who continues anyway? Not because it will eventually pay off, not because “everything happens for a reason,” and not because hope is inherently virtuous, but because that’s who you’ve decided to be and the life you’ve decided to build.

Whole Anyway

Who are you when nothing comes of it? When no one thanks you. When no one notices. When no one understands. When no one pays attention to or understands your work. When no one returns your kindness. When none of your effort is visible. When your dreams die in your hands. When your love is refused again and again. Do you become cruel? Do you become numb? Do you turn on yourself? Or do you grow into someone who no longer lives by transactions? Someone who offers what they can because they refuse to become a version of themselves they wouldn’t respect, even in private. Someone who builds character not to “attract better things,” but because they’ve decided that their character is the thing.

This requires that you build a self not based on what you earn, but the principles you keep. To still act with integrity, even if no one ever trusts you again. To still pursue truth, even if the world keeps trying to lie to you. To still try to understand, even if you will never fully understand. To still be honest, even if it costs you connection. To still take responsibility, even if it’s not directly your fault. To still love, even if that love is never returned in the way you hoped. To still act with courage, even if fear never fades. To still grow, even if you are the only one who ever sees it. To still create, even if no one ever cares. You don’t do this because it makes you happy, you do this because it makes you whole. Wholeness doesn’t always feel good, but it does feel true. Besides, you’re trying to escape the alternative.

Happiness matters. Fulfillment matters. Desire matters. But they are all impermanent and always changing. At some point, life will put you on the wrong end of fortune. And when it does, what matters to you will determine whether the loss is bearable or defining. In empty hands, how will you respond? With bitterness? With distance? With delusion? Or do you stay true to who you want to be despite the emptiness? Your character is the one thing you carry even when everything else is taken. Take it seriously.

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