I imagine it's the overwhelming feeling of "why am i here/why do i exists/what is my purpose in life/what is the meaning of it all?"
For me personally, it's usually a passing feeling, but once every few years it grows into a multi-day/week long feeling that borders on depression.
Why do I have to work? What am I toiling for? When I die, who cares? Everyone who's died before me - who cares? Those who lived a good, lucky life vs had a terrible one under oppression/torture, why did I get this one? What does it matter?
At these points, I tend to take a hard look at life and ask myself "What do I want?" and "What is making me feel this way?"
Sometimes I come up with an answer for the 2nd, mostly it's just empty noise (it's existential, so that's kind of expected). So the driving question for me becomes, what do I want?
I‘m having an episode like you describe it right now. I‘m doing okay now, but I was in a very dark state for about two months. Couldn’t get up in the morning, quit my job, started therapy and medication.
Thanks for writing this down. Knowing that other people go through the same stuff, helps a lot.
Why should life have any meaning at all? What's the meaning of the life of a squirrel or a Google search query? I'm seriously asking. I found those questions to be ill founded (something like the theme of Tarski's undefinability theorem/liar's paradox/the halting problem).
Like really why would you expect it to have any meaning at all? That is pretty grandiose. We're just (unprecedentedly) sophisticated naked apes.
For a while when I was younger I didn't experience hunger very often, I had existential crises instead. It was a bit ridiculous, the world would start crashing down around me, everything about my life would become terrible, unbearable burden... and then I would get to wondering about how long it had been since my last meal. A few bites into the subsequent sandwich and everything was back to normal.
Had one a few years ago and I became a nihilist because I couldn't really find a purpose for my existence. I'm not as ambitious when it comes to work. Switched to contacting as a 9 to 5 job and don't touch programming outside of that. I spend more time with family and friends, going to the gym and doing sports, traveling more.
> more time with family and friends, going to the gym and doing sports, traveling more
Sounds like a good life. I've seen nihilists who are equanimous (like you appear), and ones who seem rather depressed. I can see how nihilism can lead to either of these outcomes, and wonder what the differentiating factor is.
It could be that I have a loving family (including a cat I've raised since she was a kitten), I'm quite social and have lots of hobbies. Don't get me wrong, there's days when everything falls apart, but usually I see no purpose in being depressed. I only got one chance to live this day and I don't want to waste that time by being sad because life is meaningless.
Sure, if you put aside your emotions for a second and just think on why you're having a existential crisis you will probably come up with some reasons.
For me, the reason was that I wasn't sure if I was heading in the right direction, spending money and time on education. But I realized that is is kind of unnecessary and as long as I enjoy what I do and can continue to do it without any damage to my future possibilities I should probably continue. You can always switch tracks later in life, no harm done.
Emotions are rarely logical, they are often very irrational and sudden. If you put aside the emotions for a while and ask yourself if it's really worth it to be upset, the answer is probably going to be no.
If by definition "Why am I here? What is purpose?", then yes.
I've spent a lot of time "soul searching" by asking myself questions, and also similarly asked people the same questions as well to try to learn from them.
I tried to by systematic and log all my efforts too.
I put together https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/ as a means to better understand myself and why I do what I do. Being able to look at past answers has been super helpful in understanding my behavior
Maybe some of these keywords may help you. Take the time to answer some of the questions yourself (on paper, in your own notebook/journal)
Always, But for me I settle down with my religious preaching in mind. Such as the sole purpose of life is to worhship God. Do good deeds, provide comfort to needy and wait for my time to die. Every step towards good deeds provide satisfaction and every bad act brings mysery.
My existential crisis helped me to be more accepting of religion. I can see how a believe like yours helps you in these situations and who am I to criticize something that helps people feel better (which is what I liked to do before - I’m an atheist).
Yes. Still hits me from time to time, but it mostly happened between when I was 21-24 y/o.
I don't know why it happens man, it occurred to me whenever I was faced with a deep-rooted issue, an issue that got me exhausted or worried. For example, one of my colleagues, a new hire, died in an accident 4 days into his new job. It got me thinking why do we even exist, why do we die, why were we sent here?
Or when I was bored of life or was so indulged in work that I thought fuck this shit, what am I doing? Why do I even exist? What's the goal? What will happen once we die and get alive again? Even if I do exist, what's the purpose?
How did/do I handle with it? Spirituality helps, you pray to God (I'm a Muslim), then you move on. What helps is that most of us are in that crisis so you tell yourself, "Oh, alright. I'm not alone. Guess I just need to drag myself through life.". You get depressed, you get worried, you get panic attacks sometimes, you cry, you have trouble sleeping. But then... then you just wake up and you get some happiness, and then you move on. You just drag yourself.
To conclude, I find it weird how I've struggled to put my thoughts into words because I usually am able to explain myself properly. So I don't know? Just keep moving I guess... Sorry I don't think I helped.
Hah. I still believe religion will lead me to something but such an unknown question with subjective variable answers takes time and great inner self-belief. I'm not too religious so I just crawl around.
They faded away as I approached 30, which was also about the time when my life started to have more of a solid dimension – an end, far away, but not infinitely. Suddenly a dozen different things I wanted to do turned into realizations that each one would take several years and they wouldn't all fit, not a depressing thought but a focusing one.
Why am I here? It doesn't really matter, mu, the question is wrong. The question supposes an answer is there and it isn't. Purpose is all made up, pick one if you want one or don't. Zoom way in or way out and nothing could possibly care about the mundane details about what I have for lunch or the history of my civilization. Unless you're doing it for its own purposes fumbling around for meaning isn't a very high quality activity. You should probably do it for a while from time to time, but hanging it up as a dependency for everything else – well nothing comes of it.
Strong certainty of purpose always comes off to me as a little bit (or a lot) of insanity.
How did I handle it? By spending a lot of really unproductive (or perhaps very productive) time doing nothing interspersed with a bit of active fumbling for meaning often by seeking out sources. The result is more or less "meh" which came with time.
I bet I'm due for a big one in five or ten years, but that me will be a different person.
It's always been a bit slumbering in the background for me. Then someone I knew committed suicide, with an important reason being that she felt that she could no longer believe what her religious environment had told her growing up, and was left with this existential dread, and couldn't face waking up to that for another couple of decades.
Hearing about that rekindled those ideas in me as well. I didn't really deal with it, but I realised that I was still capable of enjoying things in the moment. Hence, my current strategy is: enjoy life while I can, because fear of existential dread is only likely to make it happen sooner.
I wouldn't be surprised if I'd get sucked into a depression sooner or later, but who knows, it might never happen.
I sometimes get this when I'm tired. So I concentrate on how I feel like that BECAUSE of being tired and aim to look back at those thoughts after a good sleep.
When I wake up, I'm fine again.
I'm surprised existential crisis is not a common phenomena. Life has no meaning, no purpose. "I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind." (Qohelet, in the Bible, about 2300 years ago).
So why live? In my case, I examined my options. Purposely dying (including taking extreme risk while mountain climbing, etc) is not an option for now, because it would cause intense suffering for a few people I love. So I have to live on. I don't want to fake exaltation and fill my life with extraordinary activities. It's now hard to find pleasure in novelty: after reading thousands of novels, surprising books are seldom, and the same law applies to music, and most activities, including human interactions. Sometimes I'm just waiting for time to pass. But there's still a bit of feelings and pleasure to be found in the daily blunt life.
It has meaning if you think it has meaning, it doesn't if you don't think it does. You say it has no meaning but then you say you won't end your life because it will cause suffering for people you love. So immediately it has at least one purpose - not to un-necessarily cause suffering to those you love; and meaning through that as well
You have people who you love and (probably) love you back and yet you want to go?
You're a narcissistic ignorant. Lift your head up a little and see the world you dumb idiot. Look at the people dying of hunger all over the world and you're sitting here telling us that you have read thousands of books and now everything is saturated for you instead of celebrating the privileges you have.
I hope you live up to 100 and your time passes as slowly as possible because looks like that is the worst possible TORTURE somebody can wish for you.
This comment looks like a mashed up heap made of typical facebook replies under a public thread about depression. No arguments, just the good old starving african children and "why don't you just cheer up"
To me when people say they don't want anything, they mean they don't want anything the way most people want it, or that they don't want it in a way that is expected of them.
So the solution then is to go beyond what is normally done, which can be done with courage.
Most people that have issues, have issues in the context of the society they live in. "I don't want to do extraordinary things (that is expected of me in this competitive world)", they say. "I don't want to live this or that kind of family life (that is expected of me)".
To me, there always seems to be this "that is expected of me", or "in the way things are done" present.
"Human interactions are not interesting, because the way I perceive how it is normally done, or how it is expected of me to be done, is not satisfying), and I can't seem to be able to do it any other way."
Don't get me wrong, but people have generally astonishingly absurd problems, that are in a way self-created (or rather created in collaboration with the society they live in), and that is very much related to how satisfied they are with their lives, even they might not admit it. They claim the problem is with the stars, oh stars.
And also, don't get me wrong. The problems are real. But they have nothing to do with the meaningfulness of life, they have only to do with the difficulty of having a meaningful life.
"I want to do ph.d (because I think it's the thing expected of me), but in myself, I don't really want it. I want to garden. But I can't do gardening, because I have this potential I have to fulfill (that is expected of me), etc.".
It seems to be hard to live simple life, or have simple life around, at least. People have created a problem out of their lives. People think, think, and think, as if there's nothing else. But to me, even though the status quo in this world is pretty crazy in general, there are ways to live a meaningful life, but not the way it's expected of you, but the way that you are able to create the interesting things yourself, not by expecting them from others.
A good analogy to the whole "so then why live?" question would be that of going to see a movie and realizing that you don't care all that much for it. It's not quite bad enough to make you get up and leave so you do stay to the end, maybe you even enjoy bits and pieces of it, but if you had known how bad it was overall before going you wouldn't have gone in the first place.
I hit a very low point on Friday feeling a lack of meaning in my life. One thing that really helped was having a friend who I could phone and they would just listen.
If someone's at a bridge, and phones up the number on the sign for a suicide hotline they'll say something like "I'm going to jump off". The wrong response to this is "Don't do it" or give reasons why it's a bad idea. The correct response is "Why?"
It's taken me a long time to end up with a friend who's matured enough to take themselves out of the situation, so that when I phone them up they'll listen and not give me advice and tell me what to/not to do. If the conversation progresses enough, or I ask for advice then my friend might give some as advice does have its place. The trick is knowing where that is.
This is of course what a (good) therapist is trained to do, so if you feel there's no-one you can phone up it's an option to explore.
The psychological concept of resilience[0] may also be something that's worth exploring, if you want to understand how people cope with bad situations.
Doesn't matter what type of crisis it is, just remember you have a Choice in what your mind Focuses on. Remind yourself of that Choice. Have a list of things you can switch focus too - music, going for a run, helping a friend out, planning a trip etc etc.
When people don't handle crisis well, it's usually a sign they aren't able to switch focus to something else because they don't have something/anything to switch focus too.
Always. Since I was 10years old, I've battled with the knowledge that life has no intrinsic meaning. Sometimes I break free for a few years, but it always comes back around. I'm 38 now and I don't see myself being able to come up with a convincing reason to live anytime soon. I mostly feel empty or sometimes I bubble over with rage, or deep sadness. Sometimes something interesting will catch my eye and I can become involved with it for a time, but I'm not sure I actually enjoy the process. I think perhaps, for me, all the things I want are out of reach. I'm transgender but could never transition. I was fascinated with physics and philosophy, but had untreated ADHD and could never manage to apply my decent intellect to doing well in academia. I don't have any family, never did. My mum died when I was a baby and my father is an abusive alcoholic and couldn't love me. I've tried every drug going, nothing works. I'm empty inside and the world is just as empty. And the world is so cruel, brutal. Not just to me, but to everyone and people are so cruel and arrogant and empty. I want to reach out and save the world, to take away it's pain, but there is nothing anyone can do. It's all just fucked and often I wish I hadn't been born. Also I hate my career and am so lonely working alone all the time. And IT people just don't suit me, I'm just not like them. So maybe the existential depression is just an expression of my own misery and loss of purpose. Also 3 years of therapy did squat.
> battled with the knowledge that life has no intrinsic meaning
Yes, it doesn't. But we can choose our own adventure, create our own meaning. I organize a summer camp for ~50 people. Is there any objective value to it? No - we'll all die and no one will remember. But I derive plenty of subjective value, as do the other participants. Is it worth it to do this? Objectively, no. For me subjectively, yes.
Have you read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl?
Why not give up on the search of meaning? "What is the meaning" is an ill posed question, because it assumes there is one or that there should be one. I mean think about it - what's the meaning of a life of a wolf. Or a frog. Or a computer program. Or a modern naked ape. They all just are, until they are not.
The creatures you listed were necessary for the development of a human. They are also a part of the fragile balance of nature which keeps the living conditions on Earth. I am not saying everything has a meaning (I do not know). But I disagree that this is "an ill posed question".
So was the transistor [necessary] for the development of the CPU. It's also a part of fragile timing nature of electric signals. What's the point?
By ill-posed I simply mean it assumes something under the hood. Like when someone says "how do you catch X criminals" without first establishing that X is a crime. It's kind of a trick of language.
The point is that there may be a meaning. You questions do not prove its lack.
I do not like your parallel. The question about the meaning of life can also have the answer "there is no". It does not assume anything under the hood.
You are talking about objective versus subjective meaning I think. Objectively life is meaningless according to the Nihilism school of thought but subjectively life can have plenty of meaning it all depends on how you "frame" your experience of life.
Meaning to me for example is conquering my existential problems (anxiety, depression), pushing past boundaries and percieved limits in life, seeking love and obtaining goals. These examples provide substantial meaning for me, where I'm currently at in this point of time. So meaning to some degree are what you value, subjectively speaking.
I'm actually coming from the Buddhist/meditation school of thought. It's neither about subjective nor objective meaning, it's about the emptiness of this word "meaning". For a lack of better language available - "meaning" does not mean anything. It's like pondering over the liar's paradox without defining truth (see Tarski's undefinability theorem for a strict mathematical example).
Just ask yourself - what does it mean that the "meaning" of X is Y? In the "meaning" sense that this thread is about.
The very fact that anything is happening, that there's something rather than nothing can be all absorbing. The "meaning" as people usually put it is typically a case of mis-wanting, trying to fit the reality to the language of thought, rather than the other way around, and a lack of focus on the present. In particular the religious concepts of heaven and hell are the most prominent members of this category (throughout the written history, and perhaps much earlier).
I share some of your experience, (though I'm not transgender and grew up in a loving, supporting family).
I recall upsetting my parents when I was about 7, by asking "Why are we alive? Why don't we just die?" I didn't mean it to be depressing, it was just that I didn't "get it", why people do all the things they do, and end up dying anyway. I still feel that way. I've concluded long ago that I'm not particularly depressed, and that the existential crises is not mine but is shared by everyone, it's just that a lot of people don't realize it, or recognize it somehow as such a fundamental property of being alive that they never pay attention to it.
I don't hate being here, I like it in general, I have the opportunity to experience things, but that does not mean that there is any intrinsic meaning to life, and that does set some baseline of sadness.
I know exactly how that feels. A switch flipped at some point though and it stopped bothering me:
I gave up on any notions of mysticism - religion, higher meaning and all that and instead just accepted causality is all there is. Things happen because they're the only logical thing that could happen given the conditions. Think of it as taking Markov to a broader sense.
You know what's so great about that, that relieves me so much? That there's no plan for me. No one is going to fix my issues, no one but myself. So I found comfort in having agency over my own circumstances. And I slowly started to fix whatever made me unhappy.
The stuff you mentioned will bring you down for sure. Start attending to them and life will slowly get really awesome. No silver bullet of course, there are ups and downs but it feels so much better. And get help if you have to!
Yes, I became a nihilist for some time then I found solace in Islam. The more I thought about it the more I became convinced there is a God and there is a meaning behind all of this. And when I read the Quran it took all the worries from my heart.
If there is a meaning of life, we did not find it yet. Therefore it must be beyond our current scientific knowledge. Now, science becomes the new meaning, because it may give us the original meaning. Therefore I devote my life to science. (It is not necessary to be a scientist. Any possibility to help science counts for me.)
If there is no meaning at all, then I personally do not understand why people would continue struggle in life. I just cannot accept such situation. I would rather search for the meaning.
What is the struggle if there's no meaning? In my opinion, you struggle only, because there are actually things that mean to you. You cling to things, you yearn for things, and you don't get them. That's the struggle. If you don't want anything, where's the struggle? If you don't want life, you would just fade away, with no struggle.
It's self-deceptive to think you don't yearn for things. Maybe it's a way to protect yourself.
If you're stuck, try to see the underlying assumptions you have about life, and break them. That, in my opinion, let's you take steps forward.
Yup. I guess spending time with family and friends makes it better. At least it does for me. We adopted a dog with my girlfriend this January and I'd say that just spending time with him alleviates it. I'd imagine having kids will have a similar effect (probably 100x stronger).
In the newest Indie Hackers podcast [1], founder Aline Learner mentioned that starting a business helps with existential crises because you're so busy worrying about everything else. I'm looking forward to finding out if this holds true to myself in September.
>I'd imagine having kids will have a similar effect (probably 100x stronger).
Sure, but putting the burden of existence on another human to alleviate one‘s existential pain doesn‘t make the problem go away, it only puts it on others that had no say in their own creation. Overall it increases the amount of suffering (unless we‘re talking about adoption in the case of the child, too).
I found that one of the best advice (successfully tested on myself and others) to help during existential crisis is to remember that someday you are going to die, and work from there.
If you knew you were going to die in ten minutes, what will you do ? What will you regret ? What will you wish you had done ?
I am not much experienced with stoicism, so I can't say.
My reasoning is that a crisis is generated by an unpleasant situation that may be difficult to identify, thus the feeling of powerlessness. By looking for what you want - or don't - out of life, and in an ideal situation (in front of death, a very personal thing where you don't have to deal with habits, job, or any external pressure), you can identify the elements in your life that suit you or don't, and act on it.
Existential crisis are usually related with "why" questions regarding life. But "why"s are usually of very low priority as it hardly harvest any insights given limited time. It is a helpful tool for human to explore and for scientific progress as it reduces the search spaces of potential actions or models, but not quite necessary helpful for day to day life.
So you can remind yourself that in hour mind it always seems that "why" matters a lot, but facts matter more than models and models can always be improved. "why"s are supposed to be a friend to guide us, but if they created problems, just be skeptic from and reevaluate the value of question itself.
If your crisis is a "what" crisis rather than "why". It is often easier to cope with, as you only need to open up yourself and remind that all "what" questions are just nomenclature build on immature social/scientific models and never complete. Every "what" question can be altered by a different definition.
People often relate existential crisis with nihilist view, but my opinion is that they are not nihilist enough to think through that the existential questions are meaningless or of low priority themselves.
I vividly remember my first "existential crisis". Well, perhaps that's not the right term for my experience.
The first time I had a feeling that once it's over, it's really game over and.. that's it. Very unsettling, cold, indifferent. Who'd care about some carbon remains on some big stone orbiting somewhere in the galaxy? Nobody, no one, and it doesn't mean anything.
I was 6 years old. I remember where I was, who was in the room, what were they wearing - it's all etched in my memory. That's one of the strongest feelings I've felt.
From time to time, I think about this topic and it's still difficult to accept that we are finite. But, we are and it is what it is. We didn't choose this world; we are here, might as well make the best of it.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadFor me personally, it's usually a passing feeling, but once every few years it grows into a multi-day/week long feeling that borders on depression.
Why do I have to work? What am I toiling for? When I die, who cares? Everyone who's died before me - who cares? Those who lived a good, lucky life vs had a terrible one under oppression/torture, why did I get this one? What does it matter?
At these points, I tend to take a hard look at life and ask myself "What do I want?" and "What is making me feel this way?"
Sometimes I come up with an answer for the 2nd, mostly it's just empty noise (it's existential, so that's kind of expected). So the driving question for me becomes, what do I want?
Thanks for writing this down. Knowing that other people go through the same stuff, helps a lot.
Like really why would you expect it to have any meaning at all? That is pretty grandiose. We're just (unprecedentedly) sophisticated naked apes.
Now I just get foggy and easily irritated.
When I was younger the way I experienced low blood sugar from neglecting to eat was a lot more interesting.
Sounds like a good life. I've seen nihilists who are equanimous (like you appear), and ones who seem rather depressed. I can see how nihilism can lead to either of these outcomes, and wonder what the differentiating factor is.
For me, the reason was that I wasn't sure if I was heading in the right direction, spending money and time on education. But I realized that is is kind of unnecessary and as long as I enjoy what I do and can continue to do it without any damage to my future possibilities I should probably continue. You can always switch tracks later in life, no harm done.
Emotions are rarely logical, they are often very irrational and sudden. If you put aside the emotions for a while and ask yourself if it's really worth it to be upset, the answer is probably going to be no.
If by definition "Why am I here? What is purpose?", then yes.
I've spent a lot of time "soul searching" by asking myself questions, and also similarly asked people the same questions as well to try to learn from them.
I tried to by systematic and log all my efforts too.
I put together https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/ as a means to better understand myself and why I do what I do. Being able to look at past answers has been super helpful in understanding my behavior
Maybe some of these keywords may help you. Take the time to answer some of the questions yourself (on paper, in your own notebook/journal)
https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/keywords/purpose/
https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/keywords/existential/
https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/keywords/calling/
https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/keywords/meaning/
At work? Yes. How did I handle it? I quit.
I don't know why it happens man, it occurred to me whenever I was faced with a deep-rooted issue, an issue that got me exhausted or worried. For example, one of my colleagues, a new hire, died in an accident 4 days into his new job. It got me thinking why do we even exist, why do we die, why were we sent here?
Or when I was bored of life or was so indulged in work that I thought fuck this shit, what am I doing? Why do I even exist? What's the goal? What will happen once we die and get alive again? Even if I do exist, what's the purpose?
How did/do I handle with it? Spirituality helps, you pray to God (I'm a Muslim), then you move on. What helps is that most of us are in that crisis so you tell yourself, "Oh, alright. I'm not alone. Guess I just need to drag myself through life.". You get depressed, you get worried, you get panic attacks sometimes, you cry, you have trouble sleeping. But then... then you just wake up and you get some happiness, and then you move on. You just drag yourself.
To conclude, I find it weird how I've struggled to put my thoughts into words because I usually am able to explain myself properly. So I don't know? Just keep moving I guess... Sorry I don't think I helped.
> I'm a Muslim
I always thought the most attractive thing about religions was that they resolve exactly these questions. Guess it's not so simple.
They faded away as I approached 30, which was also about the time when my life started to have more of a solid dimension – an end, far away, but not infinitely. Suddenly a dozen different things I wanted to do turned into realizations that each one would take several years and they wouldn't all fit, not a depressing thought but a focusing one.
Why am I here? It doesn't really matter, mu, the question is wrong. The question supposes an answer is there and it isn't. Purpose is all made up, pick one if you want one or don't. Zoom way in or way out and nothing could possibly care about the mundane details about what I have for lunch or the history of my civilization. Unless you're doing it for its own purposes fumbling around for meaning isn't a very high quality activity. You should probably do it for a while from time to time, but hanging it up as a dependency for everything else – well nothing comes of it.
Strong certainty of purpose always comes off to me as a little bit (or a lot) of insanity.
How did I handle it? By spending a lot of really unproductive (or perhaps very productive) time doing nothing interspersed with a bit of active fumbling for meaning often by seeking out sources. The result is more or less "meh" which came with time.
I bet I'm due for a big one in five or ten years, but that me will be a different person.
Hearing about that rekindled those ideas in me as well. I didn't really deal with it, but I realised that I was still capable of enjoying things in the moment. Hence, my current strategy is: enjoy life while I can, because fear of existential dread is only likely to make it happen sooner.
I wouldn't be surprised if I'd get sucked into a depression sooner or later, but who knows, it might never happen.
So why live? In my case, I examined my options. Purposely dying (including taking extreme risk while mountain climbing, etc) is not an option for now, because it would cause intense suffering for a few people I love. So I have to live on. I don't want to fake exaltation and fill my life with extraordinary activities. It's now hard to find pleasure in novelty: after reading thousands of novels, surprising books are seldom, and the same law applies to music, and most activities, including human interactions. Sometimes I'm just waiting for time to pass. But there's still a bit of feelings and pleasure to be found in the daily blunt life.
You're a narcissistic ignorant. Lift your head up a little and see the world you dumb idiot. Look at the people dying of hunger all over the world and you're sitting here telling us that you have read thousands of books and now everything is saturated for you instead of celebrating the privileges you have.
I hope you live up to 100 and your time passes as slowly as possible because looks like that is the worst possible TORTURE somebody can wish for you.
I realize you were probably trying to help someone by giving them a good kick, but that doesn't work on internet forums and breaks the guidelines even if your intent was good. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
If someone's at a bridge, and phones up the number on the sign for a suicide hotline they'll say something like "I'm going to jump off". The wrong response to this is "Don't do it" or give reasons why it's a bad idea. The correct response is "Why?"
It's taken me a long time to end up with a friend who's matured enough to take themselves out of the situation, so that when I phone them up they'll listen and not give me advice and tell me what to/not to do. If the conversation progresses enough, or I ask for advice then my friend might give some as advice does have its place. The trick is knowing where that is.
This is of course what a (good) therapist is trained to do, so if you feel there's no-one you can phone up it's an option to explore.
The psychological concept of resilience[0] may also be something that's worth exploring, if you want to understand how people cope with bad situations.
[0] https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience
When people don't handle crisis well, it's usually a sign they aren't able to switch focus to something else because they don't have something/anything to switch focus too.
> battled with the knowledge that life has no intrinsic meaning
Yes, it doesn't. But we can choose our own adventure, create our own meaning. I organize a summer camp for ~50 people. Is there any objective value to it? No - we'll all die and no one will remember. But I derive plenty of subjective value, as do the other participants. Is it worth it to do this? Objectively, no. For me subjectively, yes.
Have you read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl?
By ill-posed I simply mean it assumes something under the hood. Like when someone says "how do you catch X criminals" without first establishing that X is a crime. It's kind of a trick of language.
I do not like your parallel. The question about the meaning of life can also have the answer "there is no". It does not assume anything under the hood.
Meaning to me for example is conquering my existential problems (anxiety, depression), pushing past boundaries and percieved limits in life, seeking love and obtaining goals. These examples provide substantial meaning for me, where I'm currently at in this point of time. So meaning to some degree are what you value, subjectively speaking.
Just ask yourself - what does it mean that the "meaning" of X is Y? In the "meaning" sense that this thread is about.
The very fact that anything is happening, that there's something rather than nothing can be all absorbing. The "meaning" as people usually put it is typically a case of mis-wanting, trying to fit the reality to the language of thought, rather than the other way around, and a lack of focus on the present. In particular the religious concepts of heaven and hell are the most prominent members of this category (throughout the written history, and perhaps much earlier).
Maybe try sincere, old fashioned religion. It works for many. I believe there is something to it. (And done properly, it leads to helping others.)
I gave up on any notions of mysticism - religion, higher meaning and all that and instead just accepted causality is all there is. Things happen because they're the only logical thing that could happen given the conditions. Think of it as taking Markov to a broader sense.
You know what's so great about that, that relieves me so much? That there's no plan for me. No one is going to fix my issues, no one but myself. So I found comfort in having agency over my own circumstances. And I slowly started to fix whatever made me unhappy.
The stuff you mentioned will bring you down for sure. Start attending to them and life will slowly get really awesome. No silver bullet of course, there are ups and downs but it feels so much better. And get help if you have to!
If there is a meaning of life, we did not find it yet. Therefore it must be beyond our current scientific knowledge. Now, science becomes the new meaning, because it may give us the original meaning. Therefore I devote my life to science. (It is not necessary to be a scientist. Any possibility to help science counts for me.)
If there is no meaning at all, then I personally do not understand why people would continue struggle in life. I just cannot accept such situation. I would rather search for the meaning.
In the newest Indie Hackers podcast [1], founder Aline Learner mentioned that starting a business helps with existential crises because you're so busy worrying about everything else. I'm looking forward to finding out if this holds true to myself in September.
[1]: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/099-aline-lerner-of-int...
Sure, but putting the burden of existence on another human to alleviate one‘s existential pain doesn‘t make the problem go away, it only puts it on others that had no say in their own creation. Overall it increases the amount of suffering (unless we‘re talking about adoption in the case of the child, too).
Also this : https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-fiv...
My reasoning is that a crisis is generated by an unpleasant situation that may be difficult to identify, thus the feeling of powerlessness. By looking for what you want - or don't - out of life, and in an ideal situation (in front of death, a very personal thing where you don't have to deal with habits, job, or any external pressure), you can identify the elements in your life that suit you or don't, and act on it.
So you can remind yourself that in hour mind it always seems that "why" matters a lot, but facts matter more than models and models can always be improved. "why"s are supposed to be a friend to guide us, but if they created problems, just be skeptic from and reevaluate the value of question itself.
If your crisis is a "what" crisis rather than "why". It is often easier to cope with, as you only need to open up yourself and remind that all "what" questions are just nomenclature build on immature social/scientific models and never complete. Every "what" question can be altered by a different definition.
People often relate existential crisis with nihilist view, but my opinion is that they are not nihilist enough to think through that the existential questions are meaningless or of low priority themselves.
[edit] typo
The first time I had a feeling that once it's over, it's really game over and.. that's it. Very unsettling, cold, indifferent. Who'd care about some carbon remains on some big stone orbiting somewhere in the galaxy? Nobody, no one, and it doesn't mean anything.
I was 6 years old. I remember where I was, who was in the room, what were they wearing - it's all etched in my memory. That's one of the strongest feelings I've felt.
From time to time, I think about this topic and it's still difficult to accept that we are finite. But, we are and it is what it is. We didn't choose this world; we are here, might as well make the best of it.