Bart Blog

There is a way of looking at the world that promises nothing. It simply is what it is. No discovery, no mystery, no hidden plan, no ledger or agenda waiting to be uncovered. There are no secrets beneath the surface, no deeper layer that will suddenly reveal meaning. There is only what is, and beyond it, nothing.

And yet, that nothing is freedom.

It is an empty canvas: pristine, untouched, entirely white. Perhaps it is the greatest gift we have ever received. There are no lines to follow, no shapes to color within, no expectations imposed upon us. Everything that appears on it must come from us.

But this is also what makes it terrifying.

Countless lives have been spent staring at that canvas, unable to act. No colors are used, no marks are made. Because to engage with the emptiness requires something difficult: activity, responsibility, authorship. It requires us to give meaning to things that are, in themselves, inherently meaningless.

Everything is meaningless until we say it’s not.

And when we finally do act, the result is often disappointing. The drawing does not resemble what we imagined. The canvas has been used, yet the meaning feels absent.

Still, the canvas is vast. There is always more space. We can move to the side and begin again.

And beginning again is often even more frightening than the first attempt.

Yet, if we persist, something shifts. After the fear, there is joy. We discover that the meaning we assign is no less real than meaning that might have been handed to us. In fact, even a given meaning invites the same endless questioning: why this, and not something else? Follow that question far enough, and it leads back to the same discomfort, the same uncertainty.

This suggests that discomfort is not a flaw in meaning, but a part of it.

The question “Why?” begins to lose its authority. It assumes that meaning must come from somewhere else, that it must be justified before it can be lived. But perhaps the better question is: “Why not?”

The canvas is not an obligation. It does not demand to be filled. It remains, whether we act or not. It is an opportunity, one that can be taken or forfeited. That, too, is a choice.

But this way of seeing the canvas is not the only one that has been offered.

Philosophy has often confronted the same emptiness under very different conditions. In the work of Albert Camus, shaped by a world marked by war, instability, and rupture, the absence of inherent meaning demanded a response of revolt, a refusal to surrender to the absurd, a defiant insistence on living despite it. In such a world, revolt is not only a philosophical stance, but a necessity.

But necessity is not universal.

When the surrounding world changes, so too does the weight of its questions. The same emptiness remains, but it no longer presses in the same way. What once demanded resistance may now allow for exploration. What once required defiance may now permit creation.

This suggests that philosophy is not fixed, but rooted. It does not stand outside of time, offering universal answers, but emerges from within it, shaped by the pressures, fears, and possibilities of its moment.

The canvas, then, is constant. But the way we approach it is not.

We are not required to revolt against it.

We are free to use it.

And yet, the canvas remains available to everyone. The choice to engage with it, to pick up the brush despite the fear, is always present.

But circumstance determines its weight.

For some, that choice costs very little. For others, it requires everything they have simply to consider it. This is not a difference in courage, nor in philosophical clarity. It is a difference in the conditions under which the same choice must be made.

Revolt and openness are not opposites, nor is one superior to the other. They are responses to the same emptiness, arrived at from different ground.

It is always a choice.

But sometimes it is much easier to make.

And yet, many people are already doing this. They fall in love, raise children, build things, care for others, laugh, grieve, create. They are already painting. The canvas is already full of color. They are, without knowing it, living exactly this way.

But alongside that living, there is often a quiet waiting. A sense that the real thing has not yet arrived. That what they have built is meaningful, yes, but perhaps not meaningful enough. Not grand enough. Not final enough.

This waiting is not accidental. It has been taught. For centuries, culture and religion have promised a meaning that arrives from elsewhere, a purpose that is handed down rather than made. And that promise, even when it fades, leaves something behind. A standard. An expectation. A nagging feeling that self-made meaning is somehow second best.

At times, this expectation is quietly reinforced. What is lived begins to feel smaller beside what is seen. Comparison becomes immediate, almost effortless.

So people live, and doubt that they are living it at the same time.

The canvas is covered in color, and they are still waiting for instructions.

But no instructions are coming.

And nothing is missing.