[randomreader93]

It's a little hard to provide good advice when you say that the deep sense of emptiness has always been with you, and that you have no idea what you want to change.

I'm sure you've spent a lot of time thinking about how you feel, so I find it interesting that you're unable to identify what potentially could fix the sense of emptiness. Have there been any times in your life when you felt significantly less empty or even somewhat closer to a sense of meaning?

I agree with a couple of the other posters that what society expects people to want can feel very sick and pointless, and that people in such a society often internalize unhealthy assumptions over time (selfishness, isolation, etc).

Maybe spending time in a foreign country with a healthier culture would be good, or trying to carefully reconsider some of the most fundamental axioms / perspectives that you might have unconsciously internalized. Maybe it's worth dropping some of those axioms or adopting new ones? If you feel like you've hit a bottom, then testing out new perspectives just for fun might be worthwhile (or at least harmless, since the only place to go is up).

[adantical]

>I'm sure you've spent a lot of time thinking about how you feel, so I find it interesting that you're unable to identify what potentially could fix the sense of emptiness. Have there been any times in your life when you felt significantly less empty or even somewhat closer to a sense of meaning?

I do think too much self-awareness can be a problem, and maybe that's what you're getting at. The times when I don't feel as empty are usually when I'm distracted by something in the external world, and momentarily stop ruminating on my own thoughts. I do feel like they are "distractions", but now I am wondering why I consider them distractions (from what?), and if that's one of the fundamental axioms, as you say, that I should reconsider. Thank you for the insight.