Dealing with Existential Angst (A Letter to 17 Year Old Me)

I don’t proclaim, nor do I presume to have a right to your inner
emotions, nor do I claim to fully understand them. But I hope that this
doesn’t induce too great a form of apprehension in you in the fact that I am
trying to reach out to you. I am going to share my thoughts. I apologize for this being
so long, but I don’t intend to patronize you.

Young people such as yourself tend to feel something called angst to a degree that
can paralyze them. Some so called adults, in a condescending manner, like to poke fun at
adolescents about their “teen angst”, as if they have somehow figured it all out, when in
reality, angst never goes away.

The definition of angst is a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically
an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general.
In my opinion, angst is nothing but a concentration of profundities yet to be uttered.
There is an Edgar Allan Poe quote that I like; “The true genius shudders at
incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not
everything it should be.”

You are simply at a crossroads where you cannot express yourself efficiently
due to being in possession of a mind overflowing with brilliant insight and
formative thoughts… I’m sorry if this all sounds obvious to you, but if that
notion didn’t already occur to you, I am also merely trying to empathize with you.

Have you tried writing poetry? At some point in your life, try compiling a list in your
mind of the people you truly respect, perhaps authors, musicians, scientists, philosophers,
but truly anyone you see fit will do, and reflect on their works or actions, and in turn,
you will be able to make creations based on the collective knowledge of their works or
transferred knowledge imbued with your own insight.

Of course, this shouldn’t stop you from trying to write from your own ideas, if you are
resourceful enough. However, it may be difficult for you to build a list of people you truly
respect, as you are still young, and just as you seem to be unable to fully articulate your
emotions, you are probably unable to fully articulate some of your thoughts, as you keep them inside
like bated breath as they power your brain like a dynamo. Therefore, you are likely still
racked with indecision.

“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience”
– George Bernard Shaw.

If you are intelligent, your indecision does not mean you are a fool,
it means you are wary of making decisions before collecting enough information to come to any
empirical conclusions that are supported by facts and experience.

I have noticed a trend among others and myself, that the more you seem to expel from
your mind, the emptier it seems to become as it levels itself out in the transition
from being overstimulated to being exacerbated, and unfortunately, with some people,
it seems to be that the more you express yourself, in terms to certain darknesses which haunt you
… the more your mental state begins to degrade. There appears to be an inverse ratio for those
in possession of certain types of genius between creating certain things, and the destruction of
paralleling parts of one’s mind once whole. You likely feel some sense of trepidation about
expressing yourself, and are reserved in your mannerisms and how you conduct yourself. There
is dignity in your silence. It is not the silence of a fool who has nothing to say, but the
silence that if it cannot be understood by those around you, in turn means that they will neither
understand your words; as I have said, it is a silence which equates to dignity. But there is
also dignity in the act of creation.

Isolating in your mind the notions that occur either spontaneously or in reaction to some
outside stimulus and distilling them into words is a process which requires a refined touch.
Expressing only negative thoughts will in turn lead to only negative emotions being extrapolated
upon when you later reflect upon those thoughts… this too is rather obvious, but many people
seem to overlook it, in their negativity they are lost in the darkness of the recesses of their
hearts and minds. My advice to you is to pursue the path of creating things which serve to entertain you,
to stimulate you, not dampen your emotions, and in turn, your mind. There is a difference between
containing your emotions in a dignified manner, and allowing them to wither and perish. In that,
I hope that you can comprehend the distinction between composure, and indifference; simply because
you act composed in the way you conduct yourself, certainly does not mean that you do not care.

The difference between caring and being unable to do anything about the object of your concern due
to being rendered powerless by forces beyond your control, and simply not caring, is, in terms of
practicality, nothing. The end resulting from either of these two states is the same.
But that does not mean that you should adopt a defeatist attitude, there are indeed things you can
change. The smallest contribution can make a difference, and the first step to making a difference
is taking the initative. But I’m not going to tell you to devote yourself to a cause which doesn’t
fully, truly inspire you. It comes down to dictating the way in which you should spend your efforts in
order to most effectively achieve whatever goal suits you. The most intelligent way to do this is to
look at the bigger picture while also keeping perspective by remaining cognizant of the minor details.
Essentially, with a truly ingenius idea, you can kill many birds with one stone.

(…that’s all I have for now…)