We’re all here because our lives have been basically meaningless, and most of us probably wish we weren’t here.
I’ll tell you what’s holding me back…as pointless as my life has been, if I just crawl into a corner and off myself then my death will be even MORE pointless. Aint that a *****?
I keep thinking there’s got to be some way to make it count…to go out with a purpose. A human life is worth something after all, right? It’s worth SOMETHING. So how do we check-out and get our money’s worth? How do we make it count for something? Does anyone have any ideas?
I’m talking something constructive…some way to sell my life for a cause that makes a difference somehow.
To go on living this way is waste of time…I think we’re all good on that point. But how to die? I mean, how to die in a way that actually does some good.
Damn it, my life has sucked but it’s worth SOMETHING.
Is anyone feeling me on this?
8 comments
Um, if you really want to shoot for the moon, I suppose you could go to Syria and join the opposition that’s fighting Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian regime. I agree that a human life is worth, as you say, SOMETHING, so if you really want to go out with a bang there’s got to be some cause you can die for. Making other people’s lives better with your death seems like a worthy goal.
You can always donate your organs as well, though that requires you actually die. They need to be as fresh or else they are unusable. There’s always someone who could use a fresh kidney, and it prevents people’s families from having to give theirs.
I’m not telling you to die, by the way, I’m just meeting you where you say you are.
been thinking the same thing.
you could write on yourself in sharpie. if its a mental disease youre suffering from you could write about that, or just about the feeling of wanting to die, anything. that way everyone involved in youre post-death has to face the reason you died, not just the fact that youre dead. and hope any of them are effected enough by it to donate or help youre cause. or just spread the word.
help the living with youre death, you know?
YEah some sort of military… that’s what I would do if I were physically capable of it.
I can definitely relate.
There have been many an existential and absurdist philosophers who have attempted to tackle that very question. Albert Camus suggests revolt, to refuse the temptation to seek out meaning or depend on hope which paradoxically becomes the source of so much of our pain.
I have begun to wonder if he might not be right, that life is only worth something when life is experienced as it is.
The reality is that for many of us seeking out meaning and clinging to hope project us out of life and into a place of should’s, could of’s, if onlys, in a word disappointment = depression.
Expectations of how we imagine life should or could be, anything but the moment of life presented to us.
The revolt is not a FU to life nor does it negate meaning, only the search for or grasping of it.
Meaning is subjective, something that is created, and the blessed are those capable of not digging to deeply.
We are the cursed, we are the absurd.
We are here on this site not because life is meaningless but because our search for meaning, or our grasping of it ended in the absurd only we don’t quite we know it, or by our nature/nurture are unable to accept it.
But there is freedom here because we can leave behind the existential tyranny by refusing the question and experience the movements of life as they are. When we are sad, we are sad; when we are happy we are happy.
We do better when we learn better and remain calm in the moment and in this way become conscious.
Jung felt that the goal of life was consciousness, through consciousness we become individuated, ourselves. The life we live becomes the life we have.
There is no promise that comes with individuation, but just maybe, at the end of life we may find ourselves content.
Why die though? You don’t have to actually die to do something meaningful. There have been plenty of talk lately of Black history, actually I think this month is Black History month (I don’t really know) But the story of Rosa Parks. All she did was refuse to move her seat. THAT’S IT. Just refused to move. And they arrested her. Didn’t kill her, nothing even close to that. Just arrested her. But she started a chain reaction so huge, we’re still talking about it today. She didn’t have to die to do that. She didn’t even do that with the purpose of starting that reaction. She was just fed up with getting bossed around like that. So she simply said NO. That’s it. Nothing heroic or amazing, no fabulous or inspirational line. Certainly didn’t throw her life away. But we still regard her with that same light.
Suggesting ways of creating meaning to the depressed will only keep the depressed stuck.
For whatever reasons nurture or nature the depressed are not capable of creating meaning that they will find comfort in.
For us the question itself becomes the curse.
Examination of the question proves the question to be absurd.
If nothing is meaningful and that knowledge is meaningful then everything is meaningful that is made conscious.
If what we are conscious of does not bring us comfort or happiness does not change its meaningfulness.
Wishing for meaning to bring happiness ensures our unhappiness.
Seeking out meaning in such away is unhelpful or you might say unskillful.
Creating meaning that you might rest in is a skill, a skill the depressed do not have. The good news is that you don’t need meaning to enjoy life.
Paradoxically letting go of the need for meaning frees one to become more conscious and in that awareness might just experience everything as meaningful and so find contentment.
I’m thinking of donating as much organs and blood as I possibly can before I go. I feel like I would like to help other people, at least give what I can to those who need it the most.
I agree with “mynameisntlynne”
Surely if you live to make it count, to help other people, you can do more in a lifetime than in one death. It is self-less to do so, and effectively that it what you are aiming to become in suicide. Without your self. It is a good way to live.