Here is a predacious thought: There is one thing, one single thing that is missing. If I could find that single thing, then everything else would glide seamlessly into place. I would no longer worry. I would no longer trade insults with myself, would no longer engage in a continual questioning of and assault against my own existence.

            If I could enshrine this single thing and build every day around it, my life would become a celebration of freedom and creativity, love and eternal presence, enduring friendship and vacations in the Costa del Sol.

            The problem is, of course, that I don’t know what this “single thing” could possibly be. For some, I know it’s money, for others it’s a house, a family, a Bassett Hound on a leash, or shopping trips on the Champs Elysées. For me it is none of these things. For me the single thing is more likely to be just – itself – the thing that is missing and the struggle to find its shape, its pulse, its voice.

            Is it an entity, then? Am I in search of the Good Witch of the North or a garden gnome? An Extra Terrestrial, the Universe, some ultimate numinous numinosity that lives in constant laughing defiance of any attempt to define it? Or – is it an ice cream cone, hair shampoo, new socks – some simple, practical thing that could fill this absence with consolation and enthusiasm? I don’t think it is shampoo or socks, or an ice cream cone, but it’s not the universe either.            

            It feels like it could be – no, not a “sense of purpose”, not “meaning”, not “the law of attraction”, not a burning bush, not a man nailed to a piece of wood. It isn’t in any religious text or self-help book. It is something like – no. It is not love. But it might be an enzyme, or a probiotic, a mineral, lutein, amino acid, spirulina, lactobacillus, one of these things that might be missing.

            Or it could be a character trait, a quality I lack – then it is not outside, but a thing inside, something of the “soul”. No, it is not that.

            It is this, I think, for now: it is just this: what I loved as a child that – no, it is not that either. What is it then, that is missing? Can it be diagnosed? Why can’t I see it? Where is the eye with which I could see such a thing?

            If I were to say the most important thing in life is… I could not, cannot complete that sentence. At one time I would have said the intellect, reading, books; at another love, at yet another other people and at another, artistic expression or self knowledge. All these “most important things” have been variable over time, subject to change as I changed, and so are not, cannot be the one absolute thing in itself.

            Like other people, I keep myself busy doing this and then that and then the other thing to replace this absence with the appearance of presence, the illusion of substance, a substitute. All of these things I do have no meaning, are not substance, are not presence, are nothing more than a bounding and flailing in the dark, grabbing at air.

            I am rushing around in my little corner on this planet, pretending I am here for some purpose, living as if my actions matter, as if these actions are connected to that “purpose”, and as if I have a choice. I don’t. I’ve realized that, and now the absence – or what some have called “the abyss” – has really opened up and welcomed me in.

            And here’s another problem: there are no words that could possibly describe this absence, no eye with which to see it. So I ought not to speak of it, but of course the one thing I want to do is just that, because if I can describe it, maybe I can find somewhere within it that one thing that is missing. It’s not likely though.

            The mechanism which has allowed me to survive – the curious, problem-solving, pattern-seeking mind, has cursed me with this paradox: my greatest desire is to pursue what is absolutely impossible to find. And most of the time, as I try one thing and then another, I’m not aware of what I am doing. Or, if I finally become aware of the absurd, painful futility of my quest – such as now, in this moment – then the thing itself that is impossible to find pursues me as predacious thought and I can’t escape it.