I think that most people can agree that Louis CK is a genius. If not, I would bet my first child that you just don’t know who he is. There is something inside of him, and whatever it is always seems to be bursting at the seams. Often, he doesn’t even have to say anything. You see it in his looks of utter disdain in the face of ignorance, his what-the-fuck-seriously? face. If he ever looked at me like that, I would cease talking (and possibly breathing) and probably reflect on the last 90 seconds (the longest period of time he’s likely to ever spend with me) for the next three weeks. At least. You hear it in his uncensored monologues as he unashamedly strips society of the haphazardly sewn rag righteously worn as a sort of mantle, but which functions more like a comfort blanket of delusion. And his appearance last month on Conan O’Brien was no exception.

God. That clip is full of so many fundamental universal truths brilliantly woven together in their complexity to create a humorous tapestry that a gerbil could comprehend. That’s the trademark of a true genius.

Socially, life is an oscillation (like DNA strands) between striving to be accepted and striving to differentiate. That means that, for roughly half of our lives, we do things for the purpose of being accepted. There’s plenty of sociological evidence for it. Just like birds flock and fish school, humans tribe. Check out this TED Talk about tribal leadership. Basically, we’re all members of tribes, united by the values arising from the culture of the tribe.

For kids, this means having a cell phone. Kind of like having a pair of Jordans was in the ‘90s, having a cell phone as a kid is a sort of right-of-passage into cool. Or at least a prerequisite for it. No one gets to be cool just for having stuff. Every cool kid knows that.

Humans are also meant to connect. We’re wired for it. That’s why it’s hard for kids who are not sociopaths to insult someone to their face. And why it’s easier to send a text or an email to do it. We mirror each other’s emotions as they spread like contagion via neural circuits when we interact with each other, creating a loop in which the output of emotions by one is the input of emotions in the other. In this way, we synchronize our feelings, thoughts, and actions. Mirror neurons sense others’ feelings and anticipated movements, preparing the sensing individual to imitate that movement and feeling. That’s why we feel like shit when we break someone’s heart or spit in a homeless person’s face. And if you don’t, for the love of God, try to find a well-trained psychologist to work through your issues before you start skinning live cats and become the next Ted Bundy.

So, we are neurologically hard-wired to connect. But is the connection authentic? What makes it real? The thing about actually connecting to others is that we first have to connect to ourselves, which is not the easiest thing to do. It’s what potentially separates the shit kids from the kids who don’t have cell phones.

Alone is not lonely. Alone is not lonely. Repeat that, over and over. It’s beautiful to be alone. It’s the only way we can ever actually be a real, live human being. Otherwise, we’re just sheep, or puppets like Pinocchio (I wanna be a real boy!). Because it’s when we put the donut down, when we turn off our phones, when we pull our skirt down or our pants back up, that we become aware of the forever empty. And that place is like a doorway to what is really the better half of us that stays largely in an unobservable state. It’s called our subconscious. It’s a lot like Middle Earth in LOTR (Lord of the Rings for those who don’t know who Louis CK is). In it are our deepest fears and causes of our most acute anxieties. But also in it are some of the most beautiful treasures we will ever encounter, including the key to our freedom. I know this is cheesy, but our forever empty is actually our forever plenty.

So, there’s this hole inside of us all. While we all have physical orifices, this hole is one of the psyche. It’s really a doorway. And the presence of this hole does not indicate an incompleteness (as we’re all complete in our incompleteness), but rather an opportunity to grow and evolve (which is the point of living). What we’re aware of (read: conscious of) comprises part of us, but not all of us. And the parts of which we are unaware have profound impacts on us, in every aspect of our lives. By nature, we are connected, but what separates humans from animals is the disconnection between our conscious and subconscious. Biblically, this is the Fall of Man. The journey, and the purpose of life, is to reconnect…and then just to be.

And this is evolution. No one is completely aware of themselves. They simply cannot be. So, anyone who says that they are is lying. However, it is possible for one to become aware of the process of becoming aware of one’s self, which requires a great deal of introspection and reflection (that most of us [feel we] do not have time for). Maybe that changes when we die. Maybe we float into the ether and suddenly become knowledgeable of all that is. But of course, we’ll never really know that until we figure out a way to bring people back to life who can rigorously document the experience of being dead. Whatever. It’s just not going to happen, at least any time soon.

The incremental revelation of our selves to us is the process of life. It’s why a great book is a great book when we’re fifteen, and though the meaning has changed, again when we’re sixty. And the only way that we evolve is by embracing our holes. And there are many reasons to evolve, if not to save money on having to buy new books. Like wormholes, our forever empties are vortexes capable of warping us into another dimension…of ourselves.

Opening our hearts and minds to this vortex of the unknown is opening us up to emotion and feeling, which can hurt or make us feel good. It’s an unknown. And it takes a serious amount of vulnerability (as does any authentic connection). To avoid this vulnerable feeling, Louis (and Brené Brown in the link above) accurately points out that we use things – phones, food, sex, drugs – to avoid feeling. Anything. These are temporary placations to the emptiness that being alone makes us feel. And we are alone. But while we are alone, we are also surrounded by and connected to everything around us. We’re made up of the same stuff, and all of it has an effect on that with which it interacts. We’ve just forgotten that alone is not lonely. And we’ve also forgotten the purpose of experiencing feelings that we may not like so much. We can appreciate something without preferring it.

Unfortunately, our society is inundated with products which are easy to use as temporary highs to avoid feeling the lows. Which is all fine…to an extent. Things are just things until we ascribe meaning to them. Eating for comfort actually lifts our moods, anti-depressants actually help people, phones can increase the ability for humans to connect in unprecedented ways, and sex has amazing health benefits (and it’s totally fun). But we can also use these behaviors and products to avoid intimacy and connection with ourselves and others. And that’s where the problem hides, in the shadows. It’s easy to grab one of the million products or engage in one of the thousand behaviors that make us feel better when we’re sad because, why not? We want to feel better.

But the emptiness inside us can’t really be filled because it is already full. All that exists already does, we just don’t know it all yet. We’re on a constant path (or dance) of discovery of what is already there. We just have to keep ourselves open for communication – that is, open to our feelings and dreams because these are the methods by which our subconscious communicates to our conscious.

So let it hit you like a truck. Pull the car over and cry. Curl up in a ball on the floor of your shower. Do whatever you have to do. But feel it. We’re lucky to feel the sad moments. Because that means that we can also feel happiness. When we numb ourselves to what hurts, we also numb ourselves to what brings us joy. Being grateful to feel at all can help us through the moments of hurt. And that’s what they are – moments. A temporary anxiety. And then our bodies do something miraculous.

All systems strive towards balance, and the brain is no exception. Our emotions stem from two places: love or fear, and our emotions are our initial response systems, stimulating thought and dictating action if our thinking brain does not step in and rationalize the situation. How we perceive sensed stimuli dictates the chemicals our hypothalamus secretes into our bodies. Once a threat has been recognized and then rationalized, the brain releases chemicals which balance out what was released initially from fear. So, it is not what we can do to help our forever empty, but what our forever empty can do to help us. This is the birthplace of true, profound happiness.

And this is also the birthplace of art. I have crazy respect for artists. They dive into the icy pool of unknown, rather than tip-toeing in (or never getting in at all), often for the purpose of bringing back something for the rest of us to learn from. That is brave. And we can all be artists, in our own way. But the only way to do that is to discover your story residing in your subconscious, and then to be courageous enough to live it consciously. And that is living our art.

It is all too easy to become dependent upon our products and habitual behaviors, and that dependency enslaves us. And isn’t freedom something we value? Isn’t that why we went to war in the Middle East, to liberate the oppressed people there from evil dictators? Please detect the sarcasm. But really. These things only permit a temporary fix, a veneer of a cure. And they all cost money! We literally pay, at the expense of our wallets and of our souls, to be enslaved. All while the answer lies within us. Be a lamp unto your own feet; do not seek outside yourself. I think Buddha said that when he reached Enlightenment. And Jesus: The Kingdom of Heaven is not ‘lo here’ nor ‘lo there’; it is within. There are some really cool theories, including the complex theory of relativity by French physicist Jean E. Charon, substantiating the idea that we have everything we need within us. Electrons hold memories, and electrons cannot be destroyed. We are made up of atoms, which are partially made up of electrons. So, basically, our bodies are memory storage for all the life through which our electrons have passed. And tapping into these memories is the journey to a heightened consciousness. We hold the keys to our own freedom. But this is no permanent fix; it is a dance. A dance between our conscious and subconscious, a dynamic around the place of permanent peace, and that is what it means to be alive. We just have to keep listening to the music. We have to keep dancing.