The Void Waiting to Be Filled

Over the weekend, I watched Hamnet, one of the most talked-about films of recent times. The film is adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name. Although fictional, it carries traces of William Shakespeare’s life. After the death of his son Hamnet, the void into which the family falls, and from within that void, a text is born: Hamlet. And that famous question: to be or not to be.

This phrase is often read as a choice between existence and nonexistence. Yet after watching the film, I felt there was another kind of emptiness concealed within these words. It seemed to me that this is not only about being or not being, but about being within life or not.

We say, “Here today, gone tomorrow.” In truth, yesterday does not exist; the past is a void left behind. Tomorrow does not exist either; it is another void not yet formed. What remains between the two is the present moment. Yet even that moment is not full by itself. Perhaps this is why life exists through its contrasts, between the shadow of the past and the uncertainty of tomorrow, there is a space waiting to be filled.

What fills it is what we do.

The moment a person can no longer remain indifferent to life, they begin to act. Every action leaves a trace within this emptiness. That trace renders the moment real. Possibilities that are never attempted remain only as potential; what is attempted transforms into experience.

For this reason, living is not merely existing. To live is to make attempts that fill that void and to have them recorded. Perhaps this is why there is a belief in angels who record what a person does.

At every moment, a person makes a choice: to remain indifferent to life, or to take part in it. To observe, or to live.

Even a flower reminds us of this. Without attention, it withers; yet with the slightest touch, it comes alive again. Life is the same. To remain within it, one must make contact with it.

One must cultivate one’s own garden, says Voltaire. Each moment in which we choose to be within life is like a seed we plant. A person adds value to life in proportion to the extent they touch it; the void begins to fill. Meaning emerges only through contact and through action.

On that thin line between “to be or not to be,” a person exists only at the moment they come into contact with life, like a tightrope walker.

This is what fills the emptiness of the present moment.