I don't know that the extreme of "nothingness" is necessary, but it's certainly true that most people seem to have a highly inflated sense of their own importance. I know I did for a long time. It's one of the major reasons religion had a grip on me; religion generally tells you how special you are, how important you are to the creator and sustainer of reality itself, to the point that while he's juggling the interactions of atoms and celestial mechanics he has time to get honked off about what you eat for breakfast or what your last hard-on was about. If there's anything more arrogant and entitled than that, I don't know what it is.

So yes, when you realize life owes you exactly nothing and you and your hopes and dreams and aspirations are of virtually no importance at all, it can be liberating if you allow it to be. It can also be depressing if you allow it to be.

I regard it as a problem of determining my "true scope" and then confining myself to it. Dialing the ambition and need for affirmation WAY back. Knowing your place and keeping to it.

Now that I don't have to have goals like "please god" or "make a difference in the world" I can have goals that are doable. Do good work for my client today. Tick something off on my to-do list. Get some reading done. Take a good dump. Meet an exercise goal. Once your goals are that modest you can find a lot of sense of accomplishment and contentment that wasn't open to you when you thought you had to be the hero in your own personal melodrama, when you always felt no matter how much you did it wasn't sufficient.