Last Updated on May 11, 2026 by The Unbounded Thinker

Today, many people, including myself, feel empty, as if there is a void hidden deep within them. In an attempt to escape this feeling, they try to fill the emptiness with material wealth, relationships, family, drugs, travel, work, religion, and several other pursuits. Yet, despite all these efforts, they eventually realize that the void never fills up. No matter what they acquire or experience, something within them continues to feel empty.

Those who are poor often believe that wealth will finally remove this emptiness and bring lasting fulfillment. Those who are single may think that romantic love or children will finally complete them. The unemployed may think that securing a job or building a successful career will give their lives meaning and satisfaction. Others travel across the world searching for new experiences, while some immerse themselves deeply in religion.

For this reason, human life is an endless cycle of chasing something while thinking that the pursuit will finally fill the void within.

I was also trapped in this endless pursuit. I chased women and chased higher states of consciousness through alcohol, cigarettes, khat, and marijuana. I took my own path and followed my dreams, and even now, I am living the life of my dreams. I have dated beautiful girls, I have thrown parties, and I have tried out celibacy and prayer. But despite doing all these things, whenever I am alone, I still feel that my soul is empty.

I thought that perhaps living alone had created this void within me. However, deep down, I knew that this is not true because I grew up in a loving and caring family surrounded by warmth and support, yet even during those years, I still carried the feeling that something was missing.

The more I reflected on my life, the more I realized that this feeling was not unique to me alone. I began noticing the same restlessness in the lives of other people, regardless of whether they were single or married, successful or struggling.

I found that nearly everyone is searching for something they cannot fully explain and attain. This caused one question to repeatedly echo within my mind:

What does the soul want?

I wondered why we feel that the soul is never satisfied, and after deep contemplation, I came up with this answer.

The soul wants nothing: it is already complete. It is a fragment of infinite consciousness, and for this reason, it has everything within itself.

If this is the case, why then do we feel that it is empty? Maybe the emptiness is created by the gap between what we believe we must have and our current state.

We are constantly told that we need more wealth, more success, more love, more pleasure, more recognition, more experiences. As a result, we unconsciously see our current state as insufficient, creating a constant feeling of lack within ourselves.

Therefore, the emptiness we feel may not be an actual absence within the soul, but rather a feeling that arises from an obsessive desire to always be more than the current state. It is the refusal to fully rest in what is, by allowing life to flow at its own pace. It is the constant movement toward something imagined to be better.

In this state, the present moment is never fully accepted as enough, because attention is always placed on what is still missing. Even when life is abundant or filled with pleasure, there remains a sense that something is missing.

Yet everything is alright. All is as it should be. The present moment does not lack anything; it is already complete in its own divine unfolding. However, the present moment will always be lacking something if you always think that you should be somewhere else, and this feeling of lack within the present moment is what causes the empty feeling within, resulting in the idea that the soul wants something.

The soul does not want anything because, as it is said in Advaita Vedanta philosophy, Atman (the self or soul) is Brahman (the supreme, unchanging, infinite, and formless absolute reality). In other words, it is said that the soul is not separate from the absolute consciousness that pervades the universe and therefore, it has everything it needs within it.

Nothing can be added or removed from the soul. It came here whole, and it will leave whole. Therefore, if you feel empty inside, it is not that the soul wants something. It is just a surface-level, empty feeling that arises from the failure to go with the flow of life.