I desire to desire.

Hello, r/Buddhism. I come to you for advise as I feel like this community is the only that will understand what I mean and how I feel: empty and lifeless.

Please let me explain how this happened to me. I need advise for going day to day feels like a burden.

~

About 5 years ago, I was pretty depressed and decided to do research on happiness. A lot of what I read led me to meditation, so I decided to look up Buddhism since I know that's something that is deeply integrated in the religion.

I had an extremely rough childhood where I was under constant physical and mental abuse, surrounded by drugs and alcohol. Eventually, I moved out to my uncles who was a great friend, but that relationship devolved over the years and became constant fighting which eventually included physicality too. He can be a very petty guy. At the time, I must admit, I was too. We would have fights where I spent hours trying to prove that I was right when we both didn't care at all what we were arguing about.

But anyway, back to Buddhism. I learned about letting go of desires as they lead to selfishness and disappointment. I took this very seriously as it all clicked in my head that a common cause of my problems was desire. I stopped fighting with my uncle as I no longer desired to be right.

Now, the thing is, fighting with my uncle was the worst thing in my life at the time. I love him greatly as my savior, my guardian and my friend. I couldn't bear the constant fighting we had. When I found peace with him, I extended this to the rest of my life and desires. I found myself getting less and less upset at things. I became quite calm for once in my life. Laid back and not overtly sensitive to things going slightly askew.

But... over the years.... this has led me to feel empty. Soulless. Lifeless. Yes, I don't feel the immense amount of pain like I used to, but I also don't feel joy either. I'm numb.

I've always made art my entire life. Drawings, videos, sculptures, animations, etc. I had tons of ideas and I would actually make them.

I'm professionally an animator now. When given a task I can do it because I've been told what to do. When I try and create something for myself. Nothing. Because I don't have anything I want to make.

I feel like my imagination is broken. I feel like I have nothing to express or share. I have tried mind maps, writing down random ideas that branch off one another and other similar exercises. I end up with a huge list of things I don't care about.

I've made a few animations off these ideas where I spent months of my life creating something I don't care about. I have published these animations and my viewers can feel the lifelessness of it. I'm not a huge YouTuber, but my videos years ago would average a few thousand. As I began giving up my desires, my videos have become more and more soulless and my viewership has died as the videos have no heart.

(Please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about viewership. Just trying to provide an example of how my heartlessness can be measured).

~

In summary:

Letting go of my desires has made me feel a lot less pain, but also a lot less joy. I feel empty and soulless.

submitted by /u/94CM
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