When I talk about ego and arrogance, I don't mean to imply that it is a direct cause for the "emptiness", but it is what hinders self criticism and therefore development. I think that that self improvement is the way to fill your life with the things you love, and to kill the things about yourself that leave you dissatisfied, insecure and so on. Most people don't really understand the level of arrogance they are dealing with within themselves. That's why I thought it was important to stress that it doesn't even matter if you do or don't admit it to me or anyone else (and I'm not saying this in a "fuck you" way either, it genuinely doesn't matter), so long as you can admit it to yourself.
The biggest enemy is the state of denial that people get stuck in. To become a man, I think every boy has to reach a point where they look at themselves and knock down every lie they ever convinced themselves of, about themselves, the world, and their relationship with it. Some people never do. These are the ones you see stuck in the same cycles they have been for ten, twenty, thirty years at a stretch until time forces change upon them.
And as for your personality, I think that's fair enough. My interaction with you has been some message board "le master trole" BS, joking and stupid or the both of us I think. But I think it deserves to be said anyway, specially for the others reading this to whom it may apply.
My point is simple; make yourself happy, truly, deeply happy, and you'll stop worrying. That usually comes with an admission if your mistakes followed by steps taken to improve as a person. I havent reached the next "stage" in my life yet but I think you need ample time to learn resignation too, and I'm pretty sure I've done it myself. I come from a religious background so existential anxiety tore me apart when it hit. But over time, I found ways to come out with a sense of peace that felt like an object that attains dynamic equilibrium rather than stable equilibrium, by having a lot of different hobbies and desires pulling in opposite directions and balancing the whole thing kut. Now I have attained both resignation to death as well as and ability to ignore death.
I think you're right about ego impeding spiritual growth/emotional development. I really have to admit that some of the "facts" I've internalized are really just experience based assumptions, many of which are assumed due to avoidance of pain (which I guess is really insecurity). When I think about how many people I've prevented from entering my life in any meaningful way for the STUPIDEST of reasons, it really is staggering. I've never really had stability in my life in any real way that I didn't think was ending. Last night me and a friend were talking about the "feeling of impending doom" that I've had on and off my whole life and he said that whenever you feel that it's all going to come crashing down, it never does the way you expect it to so there's no point in feeling like that. I'm extremely prone to losing small, unimportant things and flying into a ragey frustration trying to find them, shortly after that conversation I lost my personal phone for a few hours. After trying to find it I gave up and accepted that my phone was gone and there are only 6 or 7 people who I care to talk to on it. If it's gone it's gone etc. and I felt no sense of loss or lack of control. Then someone showed up at my door with the phone and I felt like I gained something, instead of retained something. Anyways, that's a boring story about last night.
Seems like you've got a good perspective on control, destiny, existential angst, self actualization etc. My life has been kind of confusing but when it seems the best is when I'm taking things as slowly and mindfully as possible. Death doesn't really scare me, I know I'm capable of so much more and have no offspring but I've been around enough death to understand it doesn't discriminate. I just want to feel any kind of lasting peace before the everlasting peace ykno. thxbtwbb
