Dear Oxymore:

Yes, I felt similar feelings, engaged similar thoughts.

You wrote: “Everywhere I look, the world, or my heart, I see misery and void. I feel totally useless and disappointed by myself: when I was a kid I wanted to build a better world, I thought that it didn’t matter if I was alone or poor since I would be doing something that makes a difference”

You wrote that your father “lives in the neighbor country and who is totally alone there, still working hard at 67, with no rest, no friends and no family… still working as a gardener to afford living in his trailer. Just surviving”

Here is a possibility. Please let me know if and what part of the following is true to you:

As the child that you were, you witnessed your father’s “misery and void.” You felt deep empathy for him. You were so touched by his pain that you figured nothing in the world is more important than to make him happy.

Your dream was to make him happy and to fill his void. Your empathy for him was so strong, so overwhelming, that this dream became your only dream, your one, singular dream.

That was also your one purpose. And you failed: he is still, after all these years, still living in misery and void. Your one and only dream did not come true and you are lost in a dreamless, purposeless life, your own misery and void.

anita