This is me not giving a gosh-god-darn

[Nique]

At the risk of sounding overly emotional or introspective (I'm so far past this point that not only am I everything-you-are-about-to-read, but I am also confounded by the sheer inability of the term 'emo' both as a means of insulting someone or as any kind of self-descriptor whatsoever) but it's 3:09am and I am at once awaken and confronted by the endless gravity of mundane everyday life and the sick weightless feeling of floating in a vast inky void that is absolute meaninglessness.

Help?

Everything about life is revolving around my head and no matter what kind of importance or end goal I try to imbue anything with, it all feels exactly pointless. How exactly does one cope with the feeling that the world or all the parts of it significant to me can and may very well implode. How does one push through everyday life when suddenly my choices are 'take a lunch break at home, eat out, or quit my job, sell all my worldly possessions and just go somewhere, anywhere, in an effort to escape either suicidal depression or outrun a collapsing world economy. (I am not, to my knowledge, suicidal, and one or two doctors agreeing with my self-diagnosis at age 17 is not enough for me to throw in with anyone who is actually suffering from clinical depression. Should I invest some time to find out? Maybe.)

My day started on an incredible high too. I was well rested, got up and actually went to the gym. THE GYM. You have to understand how big that is for me. I have no idea where this is coming from. Am I just now being hit by a shockwave of social stress about the economy? Have I been pursuing a lifestyle that I don't want? What on earth do you do when your own internal ranting on meaninglessness in life slingshots back as also incredibly meaningless whining which get's tossed over to the other side ad infinitum.

NPF has never felt like a place to hide crazy, so please feel free to share your own existential crisis (Crisi? What is the plural of that supposed to be?) humorous or otherwise.

I have no delusions that these are somehow unique feelings or 'realizations' that are accurate in anyway, but even knowing that... Well, damn. It's a lonely feeling. It's 3:41am, and I guess I just felt like I needed to tell somebody.

[Green Spanner]

NPF has never felt like a place to hide crazy, so please feel free to share your own existential crisis (Crisi? What is the plural of that supposed to be?) humorous or otherwise.

If I ever get important enough to warrant a biography (ha!), the period of my life I'm in (starting at age 17) will be called something like 'the crisis of confidence'. No matter what I do, I have found myself completely unable to see anything I create as something other than a piece of shit.

As such, I've sort-of dedicated my life right now to proving to myself that I'm not a completely unlikable talentless fuck-up. I'm sure these feelings will go away over time.

It was quite possibly the worst time in my life (so far) to write a novel (though to be fair, I did start it before all this went down). Even though initial feedback has been positive, I'm still not happy with it, and probably never will be.

[Amake]

The plural of crisis is crises.

Selling your stuff and travel the world sounds like a bold idea to me. Think it through: Is there actually anything stopping you from doing it? Most people don't, because they're comfortable and lazy. Break the norm, get out there and have an adventure while you're young. Then you can tell us about it over and over in the years to come. Write a book, maybe. At the very least, get some distance to examine your life, if you're worried it's not the one you want.

[Krylo]

Everything about life is revolving around my head and no matter what kind of importance or end goal I try to imbue anything with, it all feels exactly pointless.

I cope with that through the philosophy that things don't need to have a point. So long as you're enjoying things, you're doing fine. You don't need to be creating a legacy or some such. If you aren't, then you should change things so you are.

Life's too short to waste worrying about whether things you do have a point. Just enjoy them and don't fuss over it.

Course the downside to this world view is that it leads to a lot of personal apathy, but... ehhhhhhhh.


IQ: Last I checked he had a wife. That MIGHT slow down the whole 'sell everything and run away' plan. Assuming he still has one and he likes her. That's what I'm assuming.

[Amake]

Aah, you'll never get a good price for a used wife anyway, might as well take her with you.

[synkr0nized]

Sometimes, I end up dwelling on the idea of death meaning the complete and total end of my life, the lack of any additional thought, movement, speech, experience, etc. A total void. I then inevitably try to imagine what it's like to have nothing/be a void, and it creeps me right the fuck out and invariably makes me depressed for a day or three. Good times.

But yeah don't worry about it and move on if you can...

[Azisien]

Existentialist moments are awesome.

Of course the whole part after the moment that's significant is forging your own meaning. Which is not unlike what Krylo and others have pointed towards.

[Funka Genocide]

I took a beating with the economic collapse and had to sort of flub my way through the transition between military life and civilian life for a few years. I would get really stressed out at times over things I seldom considered during my younger life.

How am I going to pay all these bills? When am I going to get a real mattress? Why do I eat so much McDonalds and why haven't I used my overpriced gym membership in 6 months?

I guess sometimes you just need a kick in the pants (or a self applied kick in the pants.) For me it was a few things, one I was laid off from my boring ass, low paying job and for another my relationship with my girlfriend went from "hey this is great" to "hey this is serious" which prompted all sort of serious self assessment and personal growth (or at least I like to think so.)

I guess it's just transitioning from the craziness of youth into the somewhat staid environment of adulthood. I still get stressed about money sometimes, and I still need to go to the gym more often, but I've defined what's most important to me and everything else can pretty much go take a walk.

I tend to override any thoughts of existential despair with things that entertain me. I mean fuck it, we're all going to bite it some day, it used to scare me when I was a kid but I've had a few decades to mull it over and its not something I really care about anymore. What I do care about is being healthy so I can live longer and play more video games/have more sex/read more books etc. etc.

You're going to get older, things are going to get boring and money is always going to be an issue. Get over it and enjoy yourself as best you can, and try to make more money while you're at it. (Oh, and have more sex. Like seriously, people don't have enough sex. That shit is awesome.)

[Toast]

but it's 3:09am and I am at once awaken and confronted by the endless gravity of mundane everyday life and the sick weightless feeling of floating in a vast inky void that is absolute meaninglessness.

Life is kind of absurd that way. Experiencing the void can be a catalyst for change. At the very least, it is an experience that is unlike any other.



Everything about life is revolving around my head and no matter what kind of importance or end goal I try to imbue anything with, it all feels exactly pointless.
The universe (or universes) is quite indifferent to meaning. Create your own. Make it up as you go along. Have fun with it. If the universe is indifferent, mock the universe by making fun of it.


How exactly does one cope with the feeling that the world or all the parts of it significant to me can and may very well implode. How does one push through everyday life when suddenly my choices are 'take a lunch break at home, eat out, or quit my job, sell all my worldly possessions and just go somewhere, anywhere, in an effort to escape either suicidal depression or outrun a collapsing world economy.
Your choices are a lot broader than that. Even if you don't take action, the very least you can do is change your attitude towards the givens in your life (like the state of the economy).




Am I just now being hit by a shockwave of social stress about the economy? Have I been pursuing a lifestyle that I don't want? What on earth do you do when your own internal ranting on meaninglessness in life slingshots back as also incredibly meaningless whining which get's tossed over to the other side ad infinitum.
I'm kind of running into this myself. My career path was going to be doing research in existential psychology. Having spent the last three months seeing how much of a pain in the ass it is just to go about starting the research proposal and how little generalizability any such research has to real life, I'm going through some serious doubts about my choices up to this point. Still not quite sure what I'm going to do about it, either.


I have no delusions that these are somehow unique feelings or 'realizations' that are accurate in anyway, but even knowing that... Well, damn. It's a lonely feeling. It's 3:41am, and I guess I just felt like I needed to tell somebody.
Sometimes an expression of despair is all it really takes to galvanize change. Experience it, learn from it, be who you are.

[Hanuman]

What are feelings? What are these things going "HEY YOU, I AM A FEELING SO FEEL ME!"

Well, are they like little spiritual emotional blah blah blah? No.
They are chemical, and although feelings can be caused by certain emotional links to certain things it's not the thing or even the trigger making you feel, it's the chemical.

What does your body do to fight stress? It metabolizes the stress hormone and flushes it away; that is how your stress goes away instead of just stacking... emotional baggage is a combination of obsolete emotional triggers and stress that was never metabolized, causing negative effects both brain-chemically and physically.

How do you stabilize or increase the amount of stress your body can metabolize?

Go for a run.

It is that simple, your body will adapt to the incoming physical stress and raise your ability to metabolize it safely, if you have WAY too much stress then its possible you should try and fall back onto a low stress lifestyle while you build yourself up to the challenges of regular stress, either that or try and dissolve your emotional triggers with things you generally can't control anyway like the US economy.
Hell, just move out of the US if it's that bad.


A little something extra to dissolve emotional triggers:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html

Getting Fit:
http://www.exrx.net/

[Nique]

Course the downside to this world view is that it leads to a lot of personal apathy, but... ehhhhhhhh.

heh. I can't tell you how much this cheered me up.

Last I checked he had a wife. That MIGHT slow down the whole 'sell everything and run away' plan. Assuming he still has one and he likes her. That's what I'm assuming.

If she wasn't going to school this might be less of an issue.

I'm enjoying everyone's expieriences/ advice even if I don't exactly agree with all of it. By way of update: I have shifted from 'freaking out' to 'bored', which may be becuase I am at work on a Sunday.

That does not mean I am not contemplating the whole running away thing. Tiffany (wife) has expressed interest in moving to South Korea. I don't know about that exactly but who knows by the time I'm 30 I could be having crazy adventures while teaching english to a bunch of asian kids.

The thing that bothers me is that I don't think I should be having episodes like this at all, esspecially when things are on a general upswing. Could be that brownie I had before bed, although chocolate usually induces something more like a nightmare.

[Funka Genocide]

I forgot to mention blowjobs.

[Amake]

blah blah blah Ah, the old feelings are chemicals spiel. It's true, as far as it goes, but it's no good to deny feelings are also spiritual things.

Having lived a great deal of my life with undiagnosed Asperger's, I've thought variously that I had no feelings, had great control over my feelings and that feelings were small, meaningless illusions caused by chemicals. It turns out I just didn't have any idea what feelings were. I didn't know what to look for, how to experience or sense feelings occurring in me. I could start crying and from that draw the conclusion I must be sad, without knowing why or how to deal with it. I'm still all figuring that out.

So anyway, I think feelings are awesome. It's fun to feel, try to feel as strongly as possible, explore your feelings, go with them, not be ruled entirely by one's intellect. I feel it's important to warn against reducing the importance of feelings.

This post has been brought to you by the crazy.

[Green Spanner]

The thing that bothers me is that I don't think I should be having episodes like this at all, especially when things are on a general upswing.

That's the thing though: there's rarely any reason for it. It just happens, which is why there's not much point getting bent out of shape about it.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

Every now and then I feel myself going a bit crazy when the idea of nothing after death is brought up. That thought scares the hell out of me and I hate feeling like my life is meaningless.

I've decided to try and make a difference in the world. It doesn't matter how small it is as long as I can do something. Its why I've decided to join the army after high school and law enforcement after that. If there is nothingness then I'd like to spend my own life keeping people away from it as long as possible.

[Bob The Mercenary]

That's the thing though: there's rarely any reason for it. It just happens, which is why there's not much point getting bent out of shape about it.

Well...

There has to be a point to it. Whichever world view you hold. It's either a Darwinian mechanism or a message.

[Green Spanner]

Well...

There has to be a point to it. Whichever world view you hold. It's either a Darwinian mechanism or a message.

Sometimes, not everything has a point. Sometimes things just happen.

[Amake]

The hour is none and night pushes against the windows and reminds me there is darkness behind all things, pushing against life's surfaces and telling us that time is short, time is very fucking short.

So I'm feeling a little deep, what with all the talk of the meaning of life. I'll tell you a secret: Everything is meaningful. Every single thing, every atom, every dream, every sin, every forgotten love letter, every pizza crust, every cloud of cigarette smoke, everyone and everything in the entire history of the universe is alive and glowing with meaning and utterly magical revelatory relevance. If you look close enough.

Pay attention, and the world will pay you back, every flickering moment of every irreplacible day. You don't even have to try to do anything special, or be anyone special. Being is special enough. Like the fortune from a teabag from the orient posted on the inside of the bathroom door of a friend of mine says, "We are spiritual beings having a human experience".

Of course it's not cheap. You have to give yourself, your sense of self, everything you are, to get everything else. You have to sell all your past and all your future to buy the present. You have to care about things to make them meaningful, and there is nothing more dangerous than that.

On the plus side, Nique, that somewhere you wanted to go may not require you to leave your house. You can theoretically travel to the center of the universe through a handful of pocket lint. What does that poem say,

To see a world in a grain of sand
And the universe in a flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

That's pointless doggerel if you think about it, self-fulfilling tautology of the cheapest kind. But besides rhyming nicely, it's a starting point. An initiation.

[Green Spanner]

The only meaning we see is that which we choose to interpose on it ourselves after having stared at it for too long.

I feel that we should admire life for what it is. Can't we just admire, say, a sunset without having to glean whatever meaning or purpose it's supposed to fulfil? Can't we just enjoy life without having to fret over the purpose of our existence?

(LOOKIT ME I'M PRETENDING I'M ALL DEEP LIKE)

[Amake]

Sure you can. Sunsets are pretty. It doesn't have to have a deep meaning to be meaningful.

And really, drifting on the surface of life is the only way to bear it most of the time.

If only we were stronger. . .

[Krylo]

heh. I can't tell you how much this cheered me up.
I live to serve.

I feel that we should admire life for what it is. Can't we just admire, say, a sunset without having to glean whatever meaning or purpose it's supposed to fulfil? Can't we just enjoy life without having to fret over the purpose of our existence?

(LOOKIT ME I'M PRETENDING I'M ALL DEEP LIKE)

THAT IS WHAT I WAS SAYING IN THE FIRST PLACE, BITER! WHY YOU GOTTA BITE MY PERSONAL PHILOSOPHIES? HUH?! HUH!? YOU JUST A PHILOSOPHY BITER!? IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE!?

[Magus]

I feel depressed sometimes, too, and also have that desire to "escape" my life by heading out on the open road, though I suppose I'd have to pay my college loans off some way or other. But it passes from time to time and I get back to studying/teaching and trying to finish my degree and so forth, which is my main "anchor" right now. Not sure what I'll do when I don't have a college degree to worry about, since I could easily inactivate my license to avoid Act 48/Level 2 certification worries.

If life feels meaningless, I'd say look at that objectively--if life is meaningless, why worry about it, right? Just have a good time with your family or whatever. If it does end up having a meaning to you, you can then pursue that meaning. Either way, there's no need to feel too much stress. Heck, the sun is going to expand and vaporize everything anyway in a few thousand years. I think it's time that society just learns to relax a little bit.

As for economic worries, that would be the main stressor for most people in that situation, if they can't even get along day to day. I'm not sure what to do for that.

[krogothwolf]

When I was younger, If I was depressed I'd either play a game of paintball or hockey. Nothing makes you happier then shooting people with paintballs or plastering some poor sucker against the boards with a hit! Or play video games!

Nowadays I just pick up my daughter. Nothing calms me down like holding her. It's so weird.

[Krylo]

Nowadays I just pick up my daughter. Nothing calms me down like holding her. It's so weird.

Welp.

Now I'm ill.

[krogothwolf]

Welp.

Now I'm ill.

Sweet! I can add more if you want :D

[Possum Knight]

I've felt the same as you have at one point or another, but nowadays find all my peace from my relationship with God. I'm a Christian and have felt great peace from everything I've learned and applied to my life. If you'd like to talk about that particular aspect of finding meaning in your life I'd gladly PM with ya about it, and if not, salgood.

Yes, I know that sounded overly Jehovah's Witnessy lol(which I'm not one), but it never hurts to ask! Hope I don't get too much flack from NPF for bringing it up.

EDIT: I also second running to relive stress at times. Around 7th grade till 10th my dad would drop me off a mile from my house, and I was really depressed at those times so i would run that mile home to kinda steam off. Granted originally i was dropped off the first time because we got in an argument and he sarcastically asked me if i wanted to run home. In anger i said yea and he booted me off...then I tried to jump in the back of the truck and fell into the ditch instead...then ran home with a hurt leg. Least i learned i was out of shape and running was good for me. Good times.

EDIT 2: Stolen from another thread kinda( one link lead to another...)
http://www.ted.com/talks/jacqueline_novogratz_on_an_escape_from_poverty.htm l
Makes you appreciate our economy and gives some hope.

[Nique]

I'd just like to quickly point this out for the benefit of all the heathens here, and trying my absolute best not to sound like I'm backseat-modding: while I appreciate and, on a personal note, agree with, the sentiment of finding solace through spirituality and that you are willing to share it, no one should think or assume that anyone here thinks that 'non-believers' have cornered the market on feelings of despair, or inversely that Christianity is the cure for depression.

Possum Knight is almost certainly not saying that at all, but as volatile a subject it is I simply could not ignore the opportunity to clear this up before it had the iota of a chance to become an issue. I asked for advise and personal expressions, Possum Knight shared his. Cool? Cool.

[Possum Knight]

I'd just like to quickly point this out for the benefit of all the heathens here, and trying my absolute best not to sound like I'm backseat-modding: while I appreciate and, on a personal note, agree with, the sentiment of finding solace through spirituality and that you are willing to share it, no one should think or assume that anyone here thinks that 'non-believers' have cornered the market on feelings of despair, or inversely that Christianity is the cure for depression.

Possum Knight is almost certainly not saying that at all, but as volatile a subject it is I simply could not ignore the opportunity to clear this up before it had the iota of a chance to become an issue. I asked for advise and personal expressions, Possum Knight shared his. Cool? Cool.

Well, I am saying that i deal with depression from time to time and that my relationship with God in Christianity has been a good cure for depression as a result from that, but I'm surely not assuming that everyone agrees with that or that there aren't some other ways for dealing with depression. That's just my point of view and I appreciate you expressing that that's ok to have despite being a somewhat volatile subject. I know it's a subject that can arise quickly into something murky given the chance, so it's good to approach it civilly. Props to you mate, I hope and pray everything works out for ya.

[Sir Pinkleton]

If only we were stronger. . .

I accept your challenge!