Is life meaningless?

  On 10/4/2011 at 2:50 PM, jules said:

  On 10/4/2011 at 2:44 PM, keltoi said:

stop looking for meaning and start looking for a porpoise.

 

 

 

lol. best post of thread. so insightful.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

seriously

 

it's my standard reply to "life has no meaning".

  On 10/4/2011 at 10:17 AM, xxx said:

Forge meaning and meaning becomes. It's not just for the Evangelicals. They just have the advantage of walking into a very well structured system.

I hadn't quite thought of it that way, good point.

when you are being buggered does it require meaning? I think not.

  On 10/4/2011 at 10:17 AM, xxx said:

I lived quite a lot of my 20's like this. There was only one thing that truly "snapped me out of it" and that was almost dying.

This has recently snapped me out of it as well. This past spring, I was having a strange and alarming week full of arrhythmias and didn't know what to do (I have a history of heart complications... TOF / recently increasing leak in my tricuspid valve, etc). My cardiologist was across many state lines, I have no health insurance and really didn't want to go to an emergency room. Laying in bed and thinking "these might be my last thoughts" was a bit scary. Hope I don't come off like too much of a baby, but it was an intense emotional state and while I wasn't exactly "sad," tears started streaming down my face as I held my hand over my irregular heart and realized everything I knew and cared for might soon be completely gone. I want very much to feel more prepared for my next bout with mortality - though it's clear that no one is ever fully prepared, it'd be nice to have lived in a meaningful way (subjective, i know) until it happens again. And it will. Point being: remember you won't always be here, and you may find it easier to enjoy things that seem arbitrary, difficult, or meaningless at the moment.

Also, think about dinosaurs, that's what I do. :sup: They stomped around like champions for hundreds of millions of years before nature gave them a random smack-down. They didn't know it was coming, and they wouldn't have cared anyway. Meaning, as has been said, needs to be forged to exist. Life carries on with or without it.

APATHY

get more hobbies and try not to think about it too much, its unfathomable to any of our best thinking so use the time to make the best of it. life in itself is relatively rare so don't take it for granted

A lot of good advice in here.

Since posting the thread I've thought more about what I can do to make my life better or give my life more meaning; instead of focusing on life itself and where I am headed in the longterm. I've come up with three things that I really think that will help me.

I feel like I had been waiting for some sort of change to happen for me, now I realize that only I can change my lifestyle. Sounds like a cheesey line out of a self-help book, but I guess it's true. In regards to my long-term life, I think I can take steps to keep it good/interesting/full of experiences (move a lot, take different jobs, blah blah). Not sure how easy that will be, but it sounds better than settling to me.

Thanks for the kind words and advice and such. Please continue the discussion/thread. There are some good posts in here.

  On 10/4/2011 at 4:24 AM, Murveman said:

I wrote about a page of stuff, and then deleted it all.

 

Have any of you struggled with the feeling that life is meaningless? How do you find meaning? Or how do you find happiness?

 

 

As of now, I am not enjoying any hobbies (uninspired as far as making films/music/qbasic games goes). My recreation lately has been smoking pot with my room mates and playing minecraft, but I'm not really getting anything out of that. It's more of an escape than anything else.

The only thing I feel truly happy doing is hanging out with my girlfriend or listening to music while I drive. And I think I've been in that boat for the past 2 years. Only difference was I listened to music all of the time and saw my girlfriend everyday.

 

 

Maybe I'm just depressed/chemically imbalanced, or maybe something in my life needs to change.

 

1st World Problems, I guess.

I find that sometimes to feel more in place rather than out of place I just have to do things that make me feel more human, and not so much a bystander watching everything else go by.

For me, that's getting on my bike and riding wherever and whenever. It's adventurous. I meet people en route, talk to them, learn about them. I find places near me that I have never seen before.

Taking my pup for a run is another new one for me, it's a lot of fun.

For a while now, cooking myself delicious meals with good nutritious food I find very rewarding too. Especially after a lot of hard exercise, and when i'm so hungry I can't stand it.

Are you a very social person?

Of course life is meaningless. You must create your own meaning. If you can't do that, I suppose you could die.

  On 10/4/2011 at 10:58 AM, chenGOD said:

  On 10/4/2011 at 8:34 AM, ZiggomaticV17 said:

I know the meaning of life.

 

It is to have a happy life.

What does it mean to be happy? To be complete.

 

Meaning... To do what it takes to feel complete.

 

Usually meaning if Friend A has an Xbox I must get an Xbox to feel Happy or if I don't have a GF i must get one to be happy. It can very from person to person what it takes to make them feel complete. Like for Richard D. James, it was to make a shit ton of music.

 

Shit like that. Always obtaining what we don't have to make us feel complete to make us happy to put meaning to our life.

 

Yes?

 

if i might just step out of my existentialist being for one second (did you know camus rejected that label?) I'm not quite sure how you compare creating original pieces of music to a material good which has hundreds of millions of identical copies.

But if it's a zen paradox you wish - what if in striving to rid yourself of the desire to gain something, you realize that the pursuit of that goal is yet another thing which you are merely striving to obtain? I know I've recommended this story to someone else on here, but have a gander - it's a quick read:

Kamo no Chomei "Hojoki"

ah, that was me chen! still one of the my favorite stories ever read!

  On 10/4/2011 at 5:23 PM, Iain C said:

Of course life is meaningless. You must create your own meaning. If you can't do that, I suppose you could die.

This is pretty much it.. It's not what you SHOULD do, but rather what you WANT to do with your life.

  On 10/4/2011 at 5:20 PM, fiznuthian said:

  On 10/4/2011 at 4:24 AM, Murveman said:

I wrote about a page of stuff, and then deleted it all.

 

Have any of you struggled with the feeling that life is meaningless? How do you find meaning? Or how do you find happiness?

 

 

As of now, I am not enjoying any hobbies (uninspired as far as making films/music/qbasic games goes). My recreation lately has been smoking pot with my room mates and playing minecraft, but I'm not really getting anything out of that. It's more of an escape than anything else.

The only thing I feel truly happy doing is hanging out with my girlfriend or listening to music while I drive. And I think I've been in that boat for the past 2 years. Only difference was I listened to music all of the time and saw my girlfriend everyday.

 

 

Maybe I'm just depressed/chemically imbalanced, or maybe something in my life needs to change.

 

1st World Problems, I guess.

 

I find that sometimes to feel more in place rather than out of place I just have to do things that make me feel more human, and not so much a bystander watching everything else go by.

For me, that's getting on my bike and riding wherever and whenever. It's adventurous. I meet people en route, talk to them, learn about them. I find places near me that I have never seen before.

Taking my pup for a run is another new one for me, it's a lot of fun.

For a while now, cooking myself delicious meals with good nutritious food I find very rewarding too. Especially after a lot of hard exercise, and when i'm so hungry I can't stand it.

 

Are you a very social person?

No, I'm not. And I've noticed that's an issue. My high school friends kind just fell into my life. I met one guy who introduced me to everyone else and after a while I had a fantastic friend base. I'm in my junior year of college and haven't made any new friends really, although I finally moved in with some people and they're pretty cool.

I always focused on the issue of not being social as a problem. But honestly, I think I need to figure out how to achieve happiness and contentment without help from anyone else.

Having people to hang out with does make life fun though.

  On 10/4/2011 at 7:01 PM, Murveman said:

Having people to hang out with does make life fun though.

It may sound cliché and is probably highly subjective anyway, but a good mixture of friends, music, women, books and booze is pretty much what manages to make me happy at the moment. And I'm pretty much never happy, so that says something. When some of it is missing, I just do lots of drugs at parties. I hope it stays this way for a while :sup:

depends what you like

being an intense introvert i would love to just go live in the middle of the woods in alaska forever with my similarly introverted lady friend. i have sort of a hard time finding meaning in my life spending so much time at work, doing things i don't really care about. at the same time it gives me mental exercise and forces me to be a little more social, so it's not all in vain.

life's what you make of it. stop thinking about trying to be happy and just go do things. i've been feeling pretty good since i started exercising more.

To me life just seems become more meaningless the older I get.

  On 10/4/2011 at 8:12 PM, theSun said:

depends what you like

 

being an intense introvert i would love to just go live in the middle of the woods in alaska forever with my similarly introverted lady friend. i have sort of a hard time finding meaning in my life spending so much time at work, doing things i don't really care about. at the same time it gives me mental exercise and forces me to be a little more social, so it's not all in vain.

Oh yea, disregarded the fact that there are introverts and extroverts. How silly of me.

I really enjoy the company of people, BUT, only if they are similar to me in several ways, or like-minded I guess (which I'm learning is apparently uncommon). I had a large group of friends in highschool, and somehow, we were all pretty like-minded. We still are, but we're pretty separated these days.

So, as of now, I'd be perfectly happy only socializing with my girlfriend for the rest of my life. But since she's not always around (conflicting schedules, assloads of homework, lives in a different city) I'd like to have a couple of friends to be with while I'm away from her.

Edit: Honestly, watmm/#watmm/chatmm have kept me sane during my long boring school days sophmore and junior year.

  On 10/4/2011 at 3:48 PM, luke viia said:

  On 10/4/2011 at 10:17 AM, xxx said:

I lived quite a lot of my 20's like this. There was only one thing that truly "snapped me out of it" and that was almost dying.

 

This has recently snapped me out of it as well. This past spring, I was having a strange and alarming week full of arrhythmias and didn't know what to do (I have a history of heart complications... TOF / recently increasing leak in my tricuspid valve, etc). My cardiologist was across many state lines, I have no health insurance and really didn't want to go to an emergency room. Laying in bed and thinking "these might be my last thoughts" was a bit scary. Hope I don't come off like too much of a baby, but it was an intense emotional state and while I wasn't exactly "sad," tears started streaming down my face as I held my hand over my irregular heart and realized everything I knew and cared for might soon be completely gone. I want very much to feel more prepared for my next bout with mortality - though it's clear that no one is ever fully prepared, it'd be nice to have lived in a meaningful way (subjective, i know) until it happens again. And it will. Point being: remember you won't always be here, and you may find it easier to enjoy things that seem arbitrary, difficult, or meaningless at the moment.

 

Also, think about dinosaurs, that's what I do. :sup: They stomped around like champions for hundreds of millions of years before nature gave them a random smack-down. They didn't know it was coming, and they wouldn't have cared anyway. Meaning, as has been said, needs to be forged to exist. Life carries on with or without it.

youd think dick cheney would be more human going through this kind of shit. but nooooo

knowing youll be a rotting corpse in less than 50 years tops should make it easier to ask girls out but it just fucking doesn't

I don't know if this has been recommended, but pets are a plus if you can have one without much issue. Even if it's just an asshole cat (which can essentially become crappy roommate who doesn't pay rent and is always hungry), it's still nice to have a creature around.

  On 10/4/2011 at 10:17 AM, xxx said:

  On 10/4/2011 at 8:13 AM, essines said:

I could just as easily kill myself.

  On 10/4/2011 at 9:26 AM, essines said:

what if you cannot find something in which there is meaning?

I lived quite a lot of my 20's like this. There was only one thing that truly "snapped me out of it" and that was almost dying. I had a toxic lithium level and was in renal failure. It was very strange because I just wanted to be left alone so death feels like really wanting to go to bed. After emergency hemodialysis and jumpstarting my kidneys, everything got intense. That was Feb. 2010. Since then, I've been continuously employed and in school fighting like a motherfucker for anything. The advantage to this is that it initiates a snowball effect. Between low-paying jobs, bills and school can be a lot of darkness. Every time that happens, I can point to nearly 2 years of continuous achievment and tell myself to get up and out.

 

That's why chen is right and so was Camus, Kierkegaard and many others. Forge meaning and meaning becomes. It's not just for the Evangelicals. They just have the advantage of walking into a very well structured system. OP: for being such a fan of Minecraft...get your existential axe out and get to fucking work

yeah i'm just in a rut between jobs. trying to go from crazy fuck around early twenties to slightly more responsible, careerish orientend mid to late twenties. working on getting a jorb but until i do its really tough to get motivated to do anything damn it! and i won't kill myself.

I wish I had a porpoise.

Life isn't meaningless, it just doesn't have a built-in meaning.

Read: Existential nihlism

The near death thing is what made me decide to move on with my life. I almost died a couple months back.

  On 10/4/2011 at 9:58 PM, kwikshot said:

Life isn't meaningless, it just doesn't have a built-in meaning.

 

Read: Existential nihlism

But whether it has built in meaning is the interesting question, that's the point, and that's why it's the thing people are focussing on. Yeah sure, we can all provide endless meaning in our minds, everyone knows that already because everyone does it.

  On 10/4/2011 at 10:14 PM, Rambo said:

  On 10/4/2011 at 9:58 PM, kwikshot said:

Life isn't meaningless, it just doesn't have a built-in meaning.

 

Read: Existential nihlism

 

But whether it has built in meaning is the interesting question, that's the point, and that's why it's the thing people are focussing on. Yeah sure, we can all provide endless meaning in our minds, everyone knows that already because everyone does it.

We make our own meaning out of life