The essence of prayer is not petition, but affirmation—affirming that one is still speaking, still yearning for meaning. The believer kneels, the poet writes, the lonely one speaks to themselves; they may not necessarily expect a response, but are merely resisting being swallowed by nothingness. The French philosopher Albert Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." The act of pushing the rock up the hill is itself the meaning, not the view from the summit. So it is with prayer—it is not to reach God, but to prove "I am still here."
If prayer is destined to go unheard, does it reduce to a form of self-deception? Precisely the opposite. The most profound artistic, philosophical, and religious practices in human history have often been born from "unanswered dialogues." In Kafka's novels, the protagonist is forever seeking an unreachable castle; in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Godot never comes. But it is this eternal "incompleteness" that constitutes the tension of the human spirit.
“God is dead," but humanity still creates “the place of God": science, art, love, even the future self, have all become objects of prayer for modern people. Calvino said all letters addressed to God ultimately return to one's own heart.
Wittgenstein admonished, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Yet humans stubbornly speak nonetheless. Because the true deity may be unreachable, yet the call itself is already the answer. We call out, not to be heard, but to affirm that we are still calling. Prayer, writing, love—all are different variations of the same gesture. In the universe, leaving one's own voice.
