Force and Thinghood: My Beloved Void

To whom it may concern,

At first I wanted to begin this letter with an accusation, "My dear void, while have you betrayed me?" But this would not be fair to you. I find myself in cycles of despair and transcendent hope, and I unfortunately find myself in another valley. To outright blame you would be intellectually lazy.

Most importantly, my dear void, is that I am terrified that this valley is distinct and unlike the dozens of others I escaped from. Previously, those valleys felt like well-confined rooms, housing only particular aspects of existence that worried me. It felt then as if I could simply chip away at the wall and find an open door to return to life. At this present moment, my beloved void, it feels like that each time I inch forward to chip away at the wall, suddenly the wall moves infinitely out of reach. My despair is with the totality of existence itself.

It feels like despair of infinite scope. Except in the most beautiful, transcendent, recursive way possible. Each attempt returns me to where I begin, but with just a slightly different orientation. Perpetual nausea of the spirit.

Although the natural response is to ask you, "Why have you made this despair infinite, and why only now?", I must realize that I still am in the same reality as I was previously. Although the scope is different this time, we find our eyes gazing upon another in the same room. The only difference this time is that my eyes are open.

I find myself uneasy, unable to find the energy to go to my job and productively work. Knowing that I am nothing but a thing, that my leaders are utterly incompetent fools and morally bankrupt, that meritocracy itself is a perpetuated myth to suppress workers, how could I? Knowing that I waste my natural gifts and essence to data ingestion and data quality, how could I?

Why wouldn't my soul revolt at the idea of going to a job that contorts it into a thing? This is Weil's idea of force.

My adored void, this force doesn't end at just my job: I have been thoroughly and systematically betrayed by the same institutions supposed to care for my well-being. My government rather cater to the extremes of wealth rather than protect me and other vulnerable citizens. My identity is treated as something to outlaw in children's books, even though I am just being the person you created me as. Isn't it disturbing, my lovely void, that religious freedom is somehow used as a justification to erase me? In this world I am nothing but a damned thing.

And yet, as a thing, here I am, writing to you across the ether. A gap of infinite distance in this finite life I embody, yet I feel you the most. What type of thing can bleed words onto the page? I would say that many people have died before their death, a marker of their soul reduced to a thing. My cherished void, I believe this to be the destruction of man's relation to himself. If you convince a man that he is nothing but a slave, nothing but a peasant, nothing but a master, you have colonized his mind and his spirit. In this he resigns himself to only a subsection of his reality, and the soul itself is crumpled and twisted in the most sick way.

The refusal to become a thing requires the most supernatural strength, the most strong foundation of your essence, which Epictetus himself demonstrated. He found infinite strength in his own finite silence.

Despite my words, my foolish attempt to reach you across this infinitely finite distance, you remain silent. Ghastly silent. I feel like a man crushed into the dirt, looking at my enemy's sword drawn to my neck, staring into his empty eyes and begging him to spare me from his force. Just like in that moment, I truly feel that I awoke three weeks ago in hell. My beautiful void, if there is a god in this realm then his incredible manifestation is in his damning absence. His absence is his presence.

I can't persist, I will persist.

What's the worst thing that can happen? I will die? That would be personally unfortunate but globally impersonal. I do not care for either outcome, truthfully. Like tides that move in and out on the shore, this is just a routine moment of human history. I too, like everyone else and all that I have loved, will return from nothing to nothing.

My beloved void, thank you for the comfort in the ephemeral nature of our world. I can rest knowing that someday this too shall end, and because of that all shall be well.