This world suffers from a great spiritual emptiness. According to psychiatrist Dr. Marian Rojas Estapé, 90% of people don’t know why they get up every morning. This world suffers from a great spiritual emptiness, and this leads us to a frantic search for relaxation methods like yoga or meditation, and the need for stimulation, bodily satisfaction, food, alcohol, sex, shopping, social media, or drugs. We seek sensations to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of spiritual emptiness. These things don’t necessarily have to be bad, but they replace the true meaning of life.

We have lost our values: We must return to our values, those that make us grow as people, those that perfect us, and those that guide us in moments of chaos and uncertainty. There is only one antidote for those moments, and that is love. We do not live with love. Loving a person, falling in love, truly loving someone—I like to say that deep within each of us, there are hidden treasures that rebel.

We don’t live up to our ideals. Confucius said, It’s not life’s circumstances that make people happy, but their ideals. Nelson Mandela on Robben Island or Saint Thomas More, who, despite adverse circumstances, were happy because they were consistent with their ideals. We say one thing, but do something else, which causes us discomfort and a feeling of spiritual emptiness or existential emptiness.

The reasons to be happy, and often sadness, resentment, and bad mood, have become dictators of our lives. As a psychiatrist, says Dr. Rojas, I usually define happiness as living in a balanced way in the present, having overcome the wounds of the past and looking forward to the future. Those who live stuck in the past are depressed, resentful, and bitter.

Those who live constantly anguished about the future are the anxious ones. Depression and anxiety are the two great illnesses of the 21st century. We have a constant need to control everything, and we live tyrannized by the mind. We live without attitude. Society is unmotivated and empty. We have stopped feeling fulfilled and motivated by what we do. The difference between our best and worst selves is attitude.

We live in resentment. Be careful with resentment, because resentment means that the two main motives in my life become revenge and hatred. People with resentment become sick. Forgiveness is an act of love, but we don’t know how to forgive, how to renounce hatred and revenge.

We don’t look within ourselves. We had to look within again. To stop, to pause and observe ourselves and our surroundings. We don’t know ourselves, which is why we don’t understand our surroundings or our place in the world, which is why we have that feeling of spiritual emptiness. Self-knowledge is the key. It’s how we find the meaning of life.