My life feels empty and pointless — what's the actual point of any of it?
After a real life-choice, what arrives is not pleasure but a settled fearlessness.
You can do everything right and still feel like the floor underneath it all is missing. Days pass, boxes get checked, and somewhere behind the activity sits a flat question: and then what — what is any of this actually for? The emptiness is not always dramatic. More often it is a low, grey hum: nothing is wrong, and nothing is enough.
Tukaram does not meet this with a reason to keep going or a list of things to be grateful for. His answer is stranger and more practical. The emptiness, he suggests, is what a life feels like when it is being lived half-in — endlessly cycling between options, keeping the center of the heart unoccupied, comparison-shopping for a better version that never arrives. सांडी मांडी मागें केल्या भरोवरी, अधिक चि परी दुःखाचिया — the repeated dropping-and-picking-up only adds to suffering. The cure is not more options. It is to let one thing actually take the center, fully, even at a cost — and to find that what arrives on the other side is not excitement but something quieter and far steadier: नाहीं भय चिंता, no fear, no anxiety. The point, for Tukaram, is not a meaning you can write down. It is a settledness you can stand on — and, eventually, a wonder (कौतुक) that makes you dance for no reason at all.
What follows are six abhangs that trace that movement: from the grey hum, through a real choice, to a life where every place has become homely.
Abhang 7 — Absorbed in something, until the void has nowhere to land
वाळो जन मज म्हणोत शिंदळी । परि हा वनमाळी न विसंबें ॥१॥ सांडूनि लौकिक जालियें उदास । नाहीं भय आस जीवित्वाची ॥२॥
Tukaram's cure for the empty, restless mind is not "stop feeling empty" — it is to be so absorbed in something real (हरिरत, engrossed in Hari) that there is no longer a place inside you for the emptiness to settle. The pointlessness, like the gossip of neighbors, only reaches you because there is a hollow it can fill. His diagnostic is blunt: the way out of caring-about-nothing is not willpower but finding the thing you can fall all the way into, and going further in. If the void feels total, it may be a sign that nothing yet occupies the center.
Abhang 14 — The emptiness is the half-living, not the life
क्षणभरी आम्ही सोसिलें वाईट । साधिलें अवीट निजसुख ॥१॥ सांडी मांडी मागें केल्या भरोवरी । अधिक चि परी दुःखाचिया ॥२॥
This abhang names the actual source of the grey hum: it is the cycling. Holding two half-lives open — never quite committing to a path, a person, a faith — feels safer than choosing, but Tukaram does the math and shows it is more expensive, not less. अवीट निजसुख — the unfailing inner-happiness — is bought with one stretch of brief, real pain, in exchange for rest that does not run out. The point of life is not found by keeping every door ajar; the perpetual ajar-ness is itself the emptiness you are feeling. The way through is the one decision you have been refusing.
Abhang 12 — When one thing fills the center, the scatter resolves
न देखें न बोलें नाइकें आणीक । बैसला हा एक हरि चित्तीं ॥१॥ सासुरें माहेर मज नाहीं कोणी । एक केलें दोन्ही मिळोनियां ॥२॥
Emptiness often feels like being pulled in every direction at once and belonging fully to none — the work-self in one room, the home-self in another, never wholly anywhere. Tukaram describes what happens when a single thing comes to sit in the heart (बैसला हा एक हरि चित्तीं): the poles that used to organize you collapse into one place. एक केलें दोन्ही मिळोनियां — I made the two into one. The scatter that felt like emptiness was never a lack of things; it was the absence of a center. Give the heart one occupant, and the directionless feeling resolves into a single direction.
Abhang 9 — The reward was never excitement; it was the end of fear
हाचि नेम आतां न फिरें माघारी । बैसलें शेजारीं गोविंदाचे ॥१॥ बळियाचा अंगसंग जाला आतां । नाहीं भय चिंता तुका म्हणे ॥३॥
If you are waiting for the point of life to announce itself as joy or vindication, Tukaram gently corrects the expectation. After a real choice has set, what arrives is not ecstasy — it is the strange, settled absence of fear and anxiety. नाहीं भय चिंता. The body that has spent years negotiating with itself simply stops negotiating. This is his most direct answer to "what's the point": the point is not a feeling of fullness you can chase, but a fearlessness you can rest in. And notice — the choice is entered बळें, by your own strength; no sign from the universe is coming first.
Abhang 49 — Every place becomes homely, and wonder makes you dance
जन विजन जालें आम्हां । विठ्ठलनामा प्रमाणें ॥१॥ पाहें तिकडे बापमाय । विठ्ठल आहे रखुमाई ॥ध्रु.॥
This is the answer to emptiness most directly. When the categories that used to organize you — crowd and solitude, city and forest, home and away — dissolve, it is not because the world went grey, but because something else became visible everywhere. पाहें तिकडे बापमाय — wherever I look, mother-and-father. The solitude is no longer lonely; the parents are there. अवघा ठाव सरता जाला — every place has become homely. And Tukaram's correction to anyone who imagines the destination as austere quiet: नाचे तुका कौतुकें — Tuka dances out of wonder. If you have arrived somewhere dimmed and there is no dance, double-check; you may have arrived somewhere else.
Abhang 6 — The point arrives when comparison goes silent
तुका म्हणे नव्हे आणिकांसारिखा । तो चि माझा सखा पांडुरंग ॥५॥
Much of the feeling that life is pointless is really the exhaustion of endless comparison — is this enough? could there be a better job, partner, path, version of me? The question never closes, so nothing ever feels like the point. Tukaram names the moment it ends: नव्हे आणिकांसारिखा — not like anyone else. The mark of arriving at something real is not that you evaluated every alternative and it won; it is that the comparison frame simply goes quiet. There is no "alternatives column" left to fill in. When the comparing stops, the thing in front of you stops being a placeholder for a better thing — and becomes, at last, enough.
In one breath
The emptiness is not proof that life has no point — it is the texture of a life lived half-in, scattered across options, comparison-shopping for a fullness that never lands. Tukaram's answer is to let one thing take the center fully, accept the brief cost of actually choosing, and stop the endless comparing — and what arrives is not excitement but a settled fearlessness (नाहीं भय चिंता) in which every ordinary place becomes homely and wonder, on its own, makes you dance.