following…

I read your last post and it hit pretty close to home for me. In 2024, my partner had two strokes. Since then, a few friends and family members have passed away unexpectedly.

To top it all off, a family friend just found out she had brain cancer. The dr said she had 6 weeks to live, unless she did chemo every day for at least 30 days, which would give her another 12-14 months.

I’m leaving my stable job of 22 years (which has slowly been sucking the soul out of me) on Friday and I can’t wait to start a new chapter in my life.

It’s sounds cliche, but life is short. If you’re unhappy you need to make change.

E: words are hard

I haven’t. Looking into therapy

You don’t snap out of out. You either try your best to avoid thinking about it or you sit with it and all the emotions that come with it.

If you want a compassionate grounding in living life without society-provided anchors, I can’t think of nobody better to guide you that Britt Hartley of the No Nonsense Spirituality Channel on YouTube. Though she’s primarily about religious deconstruction, she’s aware that humans survive by creating ANCHORS. “This thing is true and I can build my life around it.” Religion is one of our biggest anchors, but it can be anything–love of a child (who might have died), belief that work is the most important part of your life (but it might make you miserable), etc.

From your other post, it might be that one of your anchors, work, is actually making you quite unhappy but you’re having trouble letting go of it? This is the sort of thing that therapy would be great for theoretically, but either you find the right one or become your own therapist. “It is easier to become a good therapist than to find one.”"-- Daniel Mackler

it looks like you woke up and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

it just hurts because the world is shit.

Yeah. What we do with it is the make or break us.

It’s all about presence, gratitude, and community. That’s what helped me.

Yassss

Read/listen to/watch philosophy content. People wiser than us over the centuries have spent their lifetimes thinking about these questions. There’s no single answer, but there are ways of thinking through this and coming to a place mentally that you can be happy with.

Personally I find Albert Camus’s flavour of absurdism to be the best way I find things to make sense. The universe is irrational and meaningless, and that’s great news. We carry on in a meaningless world and make our own meaning.

If you like podcasts then here are some great ones:

Happiness Lab

Hidden Brain

Overthink

Within Reason (although he’s spending too much time in his analysis of religion, I prefer the other episodes)

Even just watching TV shows and movies helps, as long as you’re paying attention to the story of the charachters, the messages and the experiences/motives of the characters. Seeing the stories of others (even if fictional) helps put your own situation in perspective.

Camus is great if your life is free from suffering, sucks if it isn’t. There’s a reason poor people are more religious.

Philosophize This is my podcast recommend.

Also, look into Jungian myth analysis to get more out of stories than surface-level psychology.

Agree with your thoughts on Jung, disagree on Camus.

The fact that our lives will come to an end makes every moment we have more precious. These are unique experiences that cannot be replicated.

Easy to say, and I do believe it, but also…

Boomers like my parents chose and still choose to perpetuate abusive systems instead of opposing them. I spent too long thanking them for teaching me violence because any other reaction would be met with violence. Why am I supposed to feel grateful about being born into a backwards, burning slave world?

I am finally getting treatment for alcohol dependency. I want to stop hiding from my own life, but I don’t know how. I wasted myself on people who don’t actually care about anything but themselves. It sometimes feels like there is too much pain for anything to be worthwhile, but I am also too scared to check out early.

So… I don’t know. We have a lot of problems to solve. Things may get worse before they get better, but there is potential for things to get better. Theoretically. 🤷 I hope they get better for everyone, including you. I wish I knew.

Naltrexone is amazing if you have a chance to try it. Life-changing stuff to have on you

Not a solution but: physical touch, affection and quality time with loved ones is a very nice and effective way to feel a bit better (even if just for a brief moment), and to ground yourself back into the “here and now”. I guess you could say it is a kind of “coping mechanism” or something like that for those times when you feel like you’re spiralling into a maelstrom of existential dread.

Meditation, occasionally psychadelic mushrooms, spending time with loved-ones, and lots of reading.

Learning that life consists of times like these, and how to sit with those feeling.

Go read Albert Camus. Next step is Absurdism.

I know work and even life can feel like soul crushing and it is but one must still imagine sysphys happy or something…

Growing up I got to interact with some kind ppl, knew some monsters up close and a lot of indifferent ppl. Now I just remember kindness of others. Maybe humanity has a hope left or maybe it doesn’t. But for those who were kind to me I try and return back to the world what I got from them.

Went to my university library and checked out a ton of books about death. It was helpful to get a lot of takes on it, including multiple philosophical and religious deep dives. I no longer feared death afterward for some time. It gave me the courage to ditch my shitty job and start a new life 1500 miles away on a shoestring budget. Sometimes you’ve just gotta shake things up to feel alive again. Even if it means living like a hobo for a while.

Which books did you like the most?

Existential things are my interest. I dwell in the crisis till my ego dissolves.

Bravo! 👏👏👏👏

Facing ourselves honestly is hard. Realizing that while we may be heros in someone’s story also means we’re the villain in someone else’s is mind-altering.

You don’t overcome it. You just ride it out.

Time brings acceptance, because you can only be freaked out by something for so long

You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

Marcus Cole, Babylon 5

lots of weed

this

cannabis

I echo others in that I don’t personally feel like it will “go away”.

But I guess I view it kind of like I view trauma and grief. It will still always be there, but you can build your life outward from there so that it feels less significant with time. It might still bring you back and catch you off guard some days with how strong it will feel, even if you think you’ve “moved past” it. But you can get through it. Time and living life will help to make that a comparatively smaller part.

Best of luck.

It’s a traumatic part of growth. Every culture has a defined path you’re supposed to go down and pretend like you enjoy it but the reality of people is so much more complex than that we all hit the point where the contradictions between ourselves and the lives we are living becomes too much and changes need to be made. You can’t go back to pretending you are completely fine with what you thought you were fine with, you can only move forward. As for how to deal with this world in all its beauties and horrors now that you see it a bit more clearly, being around other real life humans who also see it clearly helps a lot. We weren’t meant to go through this alone.

Basically, this idea, illustrated through a terrible quality meme:

At some point, you get to accept the freedom this idea gives to you. And with that, comes not only appreciation of big moments of leisure and joy (like what you described as writing poetry and listening to cicadas), but also little moments of everyday life.

When you get to your job next time, try to stay out of your smartphone and be vigilant.

• A cute cat runs across the road
• Flowers bloom around
• A smell of recently mown grass fills the air
• Someone has made an art on the wall
• Someone wore a shirt with the inscription that made you smile
• People across talk about a BBQ party, or how quickly kids grow up, or plan a new friends meeting
• A stranger needs help. Maybe you can offer one, and you’ll wish each other a good day?

There are millions of such moments happening every day. Keep an eye out of them, and you’ll see the life happens all the time, not only on vacations.

This is excellent. It’s a perspective shift. Sometimes a nde or other trauma can even shock us out of feeling sorry for ourselves on multiple other traumas. Usually it’s just a conscious choice and consistent effort to see the other side.

One thing to note is that you are not alone with this feeling, in fact when I read your post it really remindend me of the song ‘I am Machine’ from Breaking Benjamin if you like Rock/Metal music.

Also if you do not want another cosmic scale existential crisis, please do not look up the meaning behind my username ;)