A dear friend visited me last week. We started talking about religion, and they told me a story about music and God.

I have been feeling the absence of something crucial in life for a while now. People who keep their lives full to the brim, and are juggling many things perhaps have the luxury of a busy schedule that blinds them to what’s missing. But now that I have time, and often an idle mind, I feel the void deeply.

Had I been religious, faith would have fit this void perfectly. It is easy to feel alone when you are ill. The uncertainty of cancer makes you doubt any project you start. At times, you feel adrift at sea. Faith could be an anchor. There is a need for a guidebook that helps you navigate tough times and hard decisions. Religion could have done this.

The need to be good and do no harm is a desire most humans share. It is tough to be authentic but also not hurtful. It is difficult to be honest but also empathetic. Being a good human, no matter how you define it, is to walk a tightrope and to fall constantly. When you have the desire to live an examined life, reflect on your thoughts, resolve your internal turmoil, reconcile with your past, and prepare for your future, you need to have certain cornerstone beliefs. When you ask yourself the larger questions about meaning, purpose, worth, suffering, and the inexorable vastness of the universe, you are without guidance. There is no trodden path to help you discover and put together the pieces. You have to build your community; you find for yourself the comfort of a routine, the comfort of Sunday church elsewhere.

When those who believe in a higher power look up at night, they can feel warmth in the starlight. They could feel safe, for a moment, that between them and the uncertainties of life, there exists a handrail. When an atheist looks up at the stars at night, she could feel completely alone if she has not put other structures in place.

For atheists as a group, the cornerstone beliefs remain without a template. We have no faith, we practice no religion. Spirituality without religion, to connect with something larger than you, is left up to each individual. For me, examinations into the topic so far have been fruitless.

People fill this void in various ways. We take refuge in art, science, philosophy, family, meditation, and a sense of community built via other avenues. I am not only looking for something to which one can surrender completely. In Meditation, my friend reminded me, it is not a problem when your mind strays from the stillness. You need to bring your attention back to the breath, back to the anchor. And as you practice it, you get better at recognizing when you have strayed; you get better at returning to the breath. That is what I am looking for. Something to bring you back to the path of light when you stray from it, something to steady you every day.

Therapy can only do so much for you and is rife with problems. The biggest problem with therapy is the myopia, it is all from you. But the counterargument goes that you look at the world through your keyhole. So it is not only therapy that suffers from being restricted to your inner narrative, but any framework of examining yourself suffers from it. It is the human condition to be myopic.

Philosophy could be this north star. The word has a lovely etymology; from philo- "loving" (see philo-) + sophia "knowledge, wisdom," from sophis "wise, learned".

I find great comfort in certain things Nietzsche said. One idea I was toying with a couple of years ago was that growing up is just an unlearning of all the masks we wear, a shedding of falsehoods, and a return to your childhood. In that way, growing up is an act not of ascent really, but descent; of deepening and growing down into you.

Look at what Charles Baudelaire, a poet, says.

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.

Here is what Nietzsche said though, opposing what I just wrote. He discusses past interests, one could interpret it as childhood interests if they had developed early enough. But he comes away with the opposite imagery.

Let the youthful soul look back on life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has elevated your soul, what has mastered it and at the same time delighted it? Place these venerated objects before you in a row, and perhaps they will yield for you, through their nature and their sequence, a law, the fundamental law of your true self. Compare these objects, see how one complements, expands, surpasses, transfigures another, how they form a stepladder upon which you have climbed up to yourself as you are now; for your true nature lies, not hidden deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at least above that which you normally take to be yourself.

Take the phrase “the fundamental law of your true self”. Setting aside momentarily discussions of the self, on there being no self, let alone a true self, take a moment to see what a lovely phrase it is to write. Isn’t that what we are all looking for? Inside you, there are two wolves. One is a poet and the other a philosopher. And in my case, both are in love with words.

This idea of growing into your self, the self that lies far above you, is tantalizing. It sounds like putting yourself together like Lego blocks. It appeals to the coveted growth mindset. So which is it I now believe? I do not know. This is just one example of how alluring philosophy can be, how comforting its passages are, and how anchoring its lessons.

Here is a salve from Nietzsche again, for the days when I feel too sick.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

So good I could kiss them and sew these quotes into a blanket.

Philosophy can fill the void for me and perhaps has replaced therapy as a guide for life. But I find the learning curve too steep now. The books are too dense. They need careful reading and the nuggets are too far apart. The going is slow and it can be a dull slog. Perhaps this is the cost of admittance. Perhaps it is a hard thing to learn with a high bar to get used to, and maybe the curve will abate to a manageable slope once I practice more.

It is easy to believe that the religious grass is greener. Faith is often tested, and the faithful have their challenges with it. However, the lack of faith creates a void that atheists work hard to fill to get similar fulfillment.

What brings you back when you stray from your path?