Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog! I'm a newbie here, and I'm excited to be making my first post in this wonderful community.
This phase of life isn’t about what you “do” next, but who you become next. And perhaps the most important step is to recognise that you still have that power. What happens next may not be about achieving external goals but about turning inward, toward the depths of who you are, and finding the next stage of your own becoming. It’s not an easy journey, and I don’t mean to minimise how isolating it can feel. But in that struggle, there is also the potential for important discovery.
You’ve achieved your ambitions, reached goals you once set for yourself, and now you find yourself at a loss. What next, after all the striving and attaining? That place you’re in is what existential philosophers call “the existential vacuum”, where the old meanings have dried up, and the activities that once filled your life no longer sustain you. This is not an uncommon experience, especially for those who have truly lived, achieved, and accomplished. You have faced life’s challenges, but now, without those goals, a deeper question is emerging: What is left?
I imagine that in my 20's, I'm facing not only boredom but a deeper existential crisis, because this isn’t about boredom in the everyday sense but a confrontation with what the existential psychotherapist Rollo May called “being and non-being”. You are, perhaps, more aware of time itself slipping through your fingers, and this awareness can leave you feeling hollow. Yet, it’s this awareness that holds the potential for something more profound.
I feel my boredom is a call to find a new deeper form of engagement with life, one that transcends the goals and achievements that used to motivate me. I don’t think that the real issue is boredom, it is the search for meaning in this stage of my life. It’s about facing the freedom I have now, not as an overwhelming burden but as an opportunity.
Meaning isn’t something I “solve” or “achieve” once and for all. It’s something I constantly create. And now that I'm standing at a crossroads, I have the freedom to redefine meaning in ways that are not dictated by past goals or external accomplishments. I can engage with life in a way that reflects the person I'm becoming, not the person I used to be.
You out there can engage with life in a way that reflects the person you are becoming, not the person you used to be.