Especially if your existence is a constant failure… When you own nothing, you have no future, job and no woman wants you (and you still a virgin as an old adult)… Recently I’ve feeling suicidal again, I don’t think I have the courage to do it, which makes this worse,I can’t even stop this from messing with me.
Sorry if you are bothered by this but I’m feeling really rotten. Just… Don’t tell me to get help, that’s not a possibility. I’m getting tired of just waking up alive.
This guy makes a new account every few weeks because he keeps getting banned. It is terrible to say given his question, but he is an attention whore and doesn’t want help. Best to ignore this.
I’m hoping it isnt just something as harmless as attention-begging that gets them banned?
Aggressive responses to refute any actual help given
considers
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
– Richard Dawkins
Dawkins was talking about human dissatisfaction with mortality, but I think that perhaps it puts perspective on life as well.
I’ve been alive as long as I can remember, and everyone I interact with is alive. Familiarity breeds contempt, and it’s perhaps easy, from that perspective, to forget how rare a thing life is.
How strange it is, to be anything at all.
Much respect to the various brilliant people who have made this argument, but it has never made sense to me.
You cannot compare experience to non-experience. By definition, not living is not negative or positive, it’s nothing. No matter how many times you multiply zero by one, the answer is still zero. Something cannot be compared to nothing. In this case, a person who does not exist can never know that they do not exist, therefore to evoke their misfortune is meaningless.
For me, the only thing a life can be meaningfully compared with is another life.
This question seems to be an interesting case of conflicting intuition.
More than that. Being dead will save me from pain, but unfortunately dying is painful. And I can’t handle that. I wish I could have lots of money to kick my problems away and buy me company, maybe a wife.
My mantra for the dark days is “well, it’s not like I care, might as well stick around and see if something interesting happens”.
The things that make me enjoy life, certain people, good books, video games, positive world events, in a way even negative world events, as I am fascinated by humanity and our story, do keep happening.
There can he difficult periods in-between, and during them I just keep reminding myself that ending it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
As for relationships, those are hard. There’s a chicken and egg problem there, where you have to be with people to learn to get people, but to be with people, you kind have to get people. So getting into it can be a huge pain.
It’s also very rewarding. And it is one of the things you can ABSOLUTELY find help with. Not from pickup artists, but just by asking people about it, and having conversations about hypothetical and real situations. Lots of people find the subject of people one of the most interesting there is, and while you’re at it, you’ll be developing your interaction skills.
I can think of three reasons, spite, funni, and to make things
I’m a little unsure why you think it’s not possible to get help. It almost always is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
There are many hotlines, but they all lead you to the same place, which makes the amount of them dumb.
dafuq
By law they must.
And what law is that?
There isn’t one.
That is either frightening or freeing, depending on your personal philosophy. 🤷🏻♂️
Why are you measuring yourself by the standards of a Hallmark movie?
If you think being successful and having sex with good looking people will make you happy, why is Beniffer getting divorced again? Does Elon Musk seem happy to you?
There is a concept in psychology called “adaptation” where over the long run, people maintain about the same level of satisfaction with their lives. Extraordinary fortunes like becoming paralyzed, or winning the lottery only effect this base-line of satisfaction temporarily.
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What
Get a job first. Sounds like you’re locking yourself in your room away from society. This is a recipe for depression.
if life is meaningless then you suddenly have the option to give it any meaning you want, abandon your old ways they clearly don’t suit you, if you have nothing to lose you have everything to gain, so go out there any try things you never would before, because what have you got to lose?
Reframe failure as winning.
You haven’t died, so you’ve succeeded in staying alive. That in itself is an achievement. And is generally more than most humans to ever exist can claim. Most died in childhood.
There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin. It’s a state that can change, but there’s no rush or pressure. Engage in activities you find interesting—you’ll meet like-minded people along the way. You may want to reconsider your visual standards or work on your communication skills. Focus on finding people who appreciate you for who you are. Common interests and truly caring about others are attractive traits. (Also, remember, older people are often still sexually active, so losing your virginity is possible even in your later years.) ((As a gay man, I can assure you that everyone is someone’s fetish—no exaggeration. Based on the categories on straight porn sites, the same seems true for heteronormative people.))
Start small. Incremental change over time is more sustainable than trying to make massive, instant changes. Identify the aspects of your life that you don’t like, and work to improve them gradually. Reflect on the wonder of being able to ponder your own existence. Lie in the grass, look up at the sky, and feel your mind wrestle with the idea that you won’t fall up into the sky.
Even if you don’t have a lot of money, there are free things you can do. Turn off your phone, leave your headphones at home, and take a walk on a trail at night. Listen to the sounds of the woods, look at the stars, and feel the breeze.
Nothing inherently matters, and that can be freeing. Since life has no intrinsic meaning, you’re free to assign meaning to the things that matter to you. Take the time you have and focus on what you enjoy.
Even if none of this resonates with you, I hope tomorrow is a better day. And that each tomorrow is better than the last. One thing you can always have is hope. Nothing can kill hope—not a dictator, not a bad date, not the weather, not even the heat death of the universe. Hope lives on. Time marches on. This too shall pass.
Cant speak to OP, but this was lovely and maybe helped me with some stuff. Thank you!
There isn’t really a point if you don’t want to do any work to get better. Not sure why you’re in asklemmy asking about why to live and then shooting down any ways to improve your life. And this is coming from someone with chronic treatment resistant depression
I’ve done most of it. That’s why.
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Please dial 988 in the US.
Not from America
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First off, thank you for reaching out. I lost two friends to self destruction, and I’d hate to see anyone else go down that path without any true understanding. You are loved, you are special, you are everything.
I see that you said you’re an old adult, yet in another comment you say you’re 35. That’s still quite young (I’m 47). You’ve got a long way to go, and believe me, it gets better with the right frame of mind. I would encourage you to start listening (or reading) to Alan Watts. The man saved my life (I was certainly on the precipice about 6 years ago), and not only that, but he helped me realize who I really am inside. There is a lot of his lectures on YouTube.
If you like lofi/hip hop, I would definitely check out Akira the Don’s Wattswave albums (II, IV, V, and VI), available on YouTube. It takes a lot of Alan’s works and summarizes them into easily-digestible beats. I started on IV, but II and V is my favorite.
From there, I listened to his other lectures as well as getting into philosophy, mostly Eastern, especially the Tao and Zen Buddhism. If that scratches an itch, here are some of my current favorites…
Books:
- The Book by Alan Watts
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
- The Book of Five Rings by Musashi Miyamoto
- Dokkodo by Musashi Miyamoto
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
- Meditatons by Marcus Aurelius
- The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung
- The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna
Video:
- After Skool on YouTube
- Kurzgesagt on YouTube
Remember that you are loved, even if it’s just from a stranger on the internet.
You’re a nice human being. But I’m sorry reading never did ANYTHING for me. I don’t read anymore, I would trade being more ignorant over getting some of satisfaction in my life.