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How do you deal with a existential crisis?

How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?

Rant: This has been keeping me up at night for way too long and every time I think about it I feel like am literally choking on my own thoughts. I have other shit to do but everything seems so inconsequential next to this. I just can’t comprehend why or how the universe even exists or how a bunch of atoms can think or that quantum mechanics literally revealed that the world is not loaded when you are not looking like how tf do you know that I am observing something.

Btw I am not looking for a purpose in life although this may be interpreted as me asking for that.

If anyone has the same problem as me good luck my friend just know that you are not alone.

RizzRustbolt ,

With the knowledge that all of the matter that makes up me existed before I was me. And that after I’m gone, that matter will continue to exist as something else.

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

Thousands of years from now, someone is going to invent the chronovisor, a device with the ability to tap into the properties of light to look into the Earth’s past in the same way people today can look out into the universe and see what it was like in the past. And they’re going to see you. They’re looking at you right now. Everything you do probably matters to them. Give them an eyecatching show.

joucker29 OP ,

This is also really comforting it is opposite to some other comments that say to take comfort in the fact that you will be forgotten and nothing that you do matters. Giving people form the eye-catching show sounds pretty fun. Thank you for the new perspective!

radix ,
@radix@lemm.ee avatar

This is so anti-nihilistic that it makes me happy. Thanks for the perspective.

Agent641 ,

Sigh… unzips

PenguinJuice ,

Watch some near death experience videos on YouTube. It's comforting.

homoludens ,

How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?

I don’t. I think it’s fucking unfair and I would rather live for a much, much longer time. But I can’t change anything about it, so I try not to think about it. Fortunately this world is full of wonders so there is a lot to distract me. Just looking at clouds - they`re fucking huge and diverse and constantly changing and have so many shades of different colors.

quinnly ,

I don’t know if I ever came to terms with it, the thought of one day not existing has always brought me a level of deep comfort. Maybe try looking at it as a good thing instead of a bad thing.

xilliah ,

I think it’s a positive thing because you’ve found another perspective.

Glide , (edited )

Having this conversation with a friend once, he told me what helped him.

Do you remember anything from before you were born? The hundreds of thousands of years before your existence? Did you spend it experiencing nothing all before you finally were born and began to experience something? Of course not.

You’ve already done a millennia of non-existence. It wasn’t painful, it wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t scary. You’re not something that started and will eventually cease to exist. You are something that didn’t exist, and then eventually, you did. Sure, you’ll go back there one day, but that’s just it: you’re not going to a new place. You’ve been there before, and it was fine, just as it will be when you’re there again.

daanzel ,

Reminds me of a quote I find kinda comforting:

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Mark Twain

Zippy ,

Now I am depressed about all that list time I can never get back.

Glide ,

By the same logic, you have infinite more ahead of you.

HappyMeatbag ,
@HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org avatar

Most of what happens in the world would happen regardless of whether I existed or not, so even while I’m alive, the impact of my existence is negligible. I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I won’t know or care when I’m gone, either. It seems futile to waste any of my short life worrying about the inevitable.

kubica ,
@kubica@kbin.social avatar

I've heard you get used to the thought with age. Not much thinking going on if you are stuck in it. I do revisit the same thing from time to time, and sometimes it seems true that as time passes the perspectives change a bit.

UziBobuzi ,
@UziBobuzi@kbin.social avatar

I don't struggle with it. When the end finally comes it will bring peace the likes of which I've never experienced. Life's been hard and as I age, my body is breaking down in little annoying ways that add up into a larger annoyance. The only thing I fear about the end is dying in pain.

GammaGames ,

Have you tried therapy?

joucker29 OP ,

No. Probably should tho.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Eventually you learn - not just rationally, but also behaviourally - that insignificance gives you a sort of freedom. Even if not solving the most important questions in the universe, you still got to live your life. Your pleasure might be meaningless, but so is your suffering - so you’re free to choose one, another, both, or neither.

Kind of off-topic, but regarding QM: what you’re saying is the Copenhagen interpretation. I tend to side more with Einstein in this, the moon doesn’t “magically” stop existing once you stop looking at it; it’s just that the difference between “it exists” and “it doesn’t exist” becomes insignificant from your subjective PoV.

Varyk ,

I spent a lot of time as a child thinking about this.

I came to the conclusion that there’s not much I can do about it, so I’ll enjoy life while I can, although I am going to enlist in cryonics just in case.

megane_kun ,

That it is ultimately inconsequential is the reason for me to relax and enjoy what we have right now. Easier said than done, of course, but the way I think of it is this: if nothing I do matters, then it doesn’t really matter what I do. And when I find myself taking things too seriously, it helps to be reminded of it. Life is absurd, but it doesn’t matter, so why not have some silly fun in the meanwhile?

What the ultimate reality of things are doesn’t really matter to us living in this reality. To whatever end this reality was created for, if, for example, we’re just a simulation, we can’t really know and at the end of the day, shouldn’t really care about. It’s literally (in both senses of the term) way beyond us.

joucker29 OP ,

This is a really liberating way to think about life basically making the most out of a really shitty situation. Instead of dreading death take comfort in the fact that what ever you do is meaningless. Thank you for this.

megane_kun ,

You’re welcome. Others might think it’s too bleak, and I sort of agree. But it’s freeing, as you’ve said. It allows us to focus on the here and now. And while we’re here (for whatever reason, be it by choice or not), why not enjoy what we can?

foggy ,

Whenever I’m anxious about something in my life, I take a deep breath and remind myself “none of this matters.”

The idea of the universe’s indifference can be crushing, and it can be liberating.

Daft_ish ,

Definitely. I take what ever is bothering me and remind myself if my entire world crashed around me tomorrow I’m not going to just drop dead or anything. Time will march on, life will go on. There may be many stages of grief and things that make me feel uncomfortable but ultimately every night I will still go to sleep and wake to start again.

Life is just a series of events. Not inherently bad, not inherently good, just the results of a universe in spin. We can direct the course of our life but if a meteor strikes tomorrow there is nothing an individual themselves could have done to stop it.

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