Why?
Whenever I get a spare moment, when I let all of my worries wash past me, I can’t help but wonder why I’m alive.
It’s tempting to just run out into the rain, away from my classes, job, and just live. Why am I stressing over relatively minor details such as my career if I am only a collection of molecules that developed from a chance strike eons ago. Why am I trying to grow if it will all be reversed in the end? Why struggle if even global success is less influential than a celestial breeze? Why question if there will be no resolution?
I want to forget everything; begin anew without the taints or conferred inhibitions of society. I want to do what I really want, not what has been entrenched within my head since birth. I want to develop as myself, my own path through the fresh blue snow of my eyes. It sickens me that I will never see myself, that every reflection is first bounced off a societal mirror. I will never know what I want.
Jon
Sep 27, 09:16 AM
Waaaaiiiittt a minute. I thought you mentioned in some of your previous posts the existence of the soul, not just simply a “collection of molecules that developed from a chance strike eons ago.” There is something to the soul, isn’t there?...
Instances where the existence of a personal, infinite, triune god would help…
Teddy Zetterlund
Sep 27, 05:57 PM
Can’t help you, feeling exactly the same…
Adam Bouskila
Sep 28, 04:00 AM
I feel that often as well, interesting that you were able to put it into words.
I think that the core of my persona is exactly what you described above. Saying that sort of thing sounds corny and really uncomfortable if it were in real life. It’s much easier to express this deep feeling online.
It’s called existential intelligence.
Jason Marble
Sep 28, 09:31 AM
Why? Well, I’m begining to believe there’s actually a fairly simple reason for most of the things we do in life. Imitation.
Seriously. It wasn’t untill my third year in college when I sort of stumbled upon this “theory”, if you will.
Evolutionary psychology has tried to place a logical, evolution-based reasoning behind why we do the things we do. But, there may be problems with trying to explain why we do things from an evolutionary stand point. Remember, evolution isn’t supposed to have any direction or path.
Imitation may be the key to why at least humans do the things we do. As Susan Blackmore has noted, humans may be the only animals capable of true imitation.
So, let me bring this to a breif close. What makes us so unique, is what makes us do the things we do. It’s what makes us “human”. We have an imitative mechanism that we can’t turn off. We are constantly pushed forward through this cylce of imitation and innovation.
Want to start anew? Pick a place you’ld like to start and wipe out all memory of everything. But, there’s still a problem, you can’t objectively pick a place.
What to do? Do what makes you feel good today, and what will make you feel good tomorrow.
Michael
Sep 28, 07:40 PM
Feeling hopelessly hopeless? Your trek to DC for the protest would certainly indicate a life with purpose.
Still, I think there are few who do not experience that sense of listlessness when nothing we do seems to be worthy of any real time. I happen to be a Christian and a preacher, one who is supposed to be magically transformed (to hear some evangelicals tell it), and yet there are days when I feel absolutely useless.
Finding the point in our lives where we know we need to be is part of what I consider to be an incredible journey. Christians believe in the eternal destination, but the journey itself is the adventure and opportunity to laugh, love, and live.
Juan
Sep 29, 01:07 AM
Why should you live? I don’t know the answer but I can say that nothing nature makes is superfluous; nature is resourceful. If such is our nature, to come into this world and flourish and then succumb to death, then that is how it is. We cannot change it, so why rebel against it? Why despair?
If at our end, all those bits that compose us are dispersed throughout the cosmos and form part of new things, then is that not amazing? Alas, you or what is you now will not continue and I suspect that that is the problem (it has been said that man would rather toil away as the meanest slave than to cease to be. Man would rather will nothing than to not will at all!). But the atoms that are you continue if that is any consolation. Then again I have been taught and have come to believe that this is the end; there is no afterlife, no hell, no heaven – simply the desolution of this me that is an edifice of atoms. No-one knows what comes after; everything is theories. Some are more probable than others, depends on who you consult.
So we have a life now. What came before, does not matter. What shall come also does not matter. Why not? because we cannot know for certain what was and what shall be. But we know the present or have a sense of it – I don’t believe we can know anything, i.e., know eternal truths, but we maybe be able to know interpretations, reflections of these – if eternal truths exist at all.
In effect, we must work with what we have. With regards to never being able to know yourself … I think you might be able to. It’s not easy, it’s an arduous process. But nothing of worth is free of travails.
If you want to be free of distress, then believe in something that offers you answers and has the how and why, e.g., organized religion. If you want truth, if you are her disciple, then march on.
Benedict Eastaugh
Sep 30, 09:06 PM
Jon: existential angst, by its very nature, often tends not to cohere too well with our professed beliefs.
beast
Nov 6, 04:25 PM
of course you know what you want.
you can ask “what would I have wanted had I not been born in this time and this society” but now the society you’ve lived in has become a part of you.
So what you want is jut…what you want.