To think life is more of a pain in the arse than it's worth

It’s futile in that there’s no ‘point’ to it I guess.
I have a great time though. Friends, animals, good food, travel, music…
it’s great.

@CurdinHenry you choose your own path in life.

If your life is shit then that's due to choices you are making. Don't blame your parents.

You can choose to carry on feeling life is shit or you can make some changes. Big changes. Small changes. That's up to you. Don't wait for life to come to you.

My life is tough but I love life. I have found some great people and learned (the hard way) not to let others drag you down.

Did you only recently discover that life is meaningless and everything dies?

I think the existentialists had it right with their view that the world is just absurd.

As humans we try to invent things to give it meaning and purpose but really we don't know why we are here, what the point of it is and a lot of whether you live a great or a crap life is just down to luck.

Religion and God (s) are the main way we have tried to give it all some point - the old "struggle here & be rewarded in the after life" is a great way to convince yourself that it's worth it and that obviously kept people going for centuries.
Without that central belief it does all become a bit bleak and pointless if you really think about it.

I agree @CurdinHenrythey won’t introduce assisted dying as it will mean less taxpayers

Yes, money doesn't necessarily buy happiness in and of itself but it does offer choices & those can lead to happiness.

People who say that life is objectively great, and that you can just choose to be happy, have something wrong with them chemically, I think. It's an imbalance in the brain.

Yes, exactly.

You lost her inheritance. For what? So that your mother could have a few extra years when I assumed she had already had a long and fulfilling life.

I'm sure your mother would not have wanted that and would have much preferred you and your sister to have the money.

I agree. In fact, having experienced some very traumatic events has made me appreciate life even more.
I know too many people who haven’t had the chance to live a long life so I’m not wasting mine by being miserable. It would feel like an insult to those I’ve lost.

@MustTryHarderAndHarder What care? My late mum's care home cost my sibling & I about £120,000!

Not as easy as it sounds. I have PTSD, ADHD, EUPD which means every single day is a struggle. My life objectively is not that bad, and I do get a lot of small pleasures. But honestly, I’m exhausted all the time. I can’t choose not to be ill.

Part time work and only having one child are my suggestions for helping to make sure life is not more of a stress than it's worth.

What a lot of misery guts there are on this thread. I think that part of it is a (maybe unconscious) desire to bring others down and tell them that their joy isn't real, which is meanspirited. If you are a meanspirited person, then you will never be happy.

These mindsets are largely affected by situations our of our control e.g. economic, war etc. But some of it can be altered by changing long term personal habits such as exercising more, finding people who are actually interesting to you to socialise with and learning new skills. Actions like these have been shown to shift a person's mindset to more positive and receptive to the good in life.

I agree. My greatest desire is to see my adored grandchildren reach adulthood. My father was a serial entrepreneur & launched a new business in his 70s because it kept him going between holidays etc & made him happy. He was very fit & healthy & never really stopped working.To say older people are using up resources therefore denying the young is utterly atrocious.

Take control back then. Do things that you want to do, invest in your future, enjoy that you are part of the universe and finds things you love.

@CurdinHenry I think you should stop using MN as your therapy (not just this thread) and seek help in the real world.

If everyone else is a little bit shit, it's not (just) them

There is no point to living and life is more of a drag than it is a pleasure.

we’ll change your life then @berlinbaby2025. You can literally change it tomorrow. I’m an absolute nihilist and agree with the first point - which makes the second point easy to deal with. What would make your life more a pleasure than a drag? Quitting your job and going to live on a beach in Bali? Joining a commune and living off the land? Moving to a windswept Scottish Island? Or just not doing all those ‘draggy’ things and doing small things you enjoy. Today, I’ve said fuck it to my admin list and am chilling under my sun shade. Whatever it is. Just do it

Well, caring for a disabled child is totally different and is totally unselfish.

I also need to care for my disabled husband, but after that, I don't want to keep living and living and using resources.

I don't see that happening but you're entitled to your perspective. We're currently in a peak of elderly need and, due to smaller sized families that the boomer generation had (I don't use that term in a negative way), there will be less older people in future decades.

While I have a good quality of life, I plan to stick around and enjoy it. I want to get old as I have a disabled child I'm caring for and I want to be here and capable for them as long as possible. That's a very unselfish motivation on my part. Otherwise I'd probably be 'whatever will be, will be'. I have other reasons to want to stick around and be capable.

Well, if you want to then no-one can stop you but I personally think that it is selfish.

That is just my opinion and I hope that life expectancy keeps on decreasing.

Where are the young going to get their resources from if they are all used up caring for older people as in Japan?

And what if you're a 75 year old still living a full and happy life? What's wrong with that? Those young people will get to use all those resources in their own good time.

All resources, water, energy, the state pension, care paid for by the state...

Everything basically that an old person uses when they have already lived a long life and should be grateful because so many other people do not.

Yes we have. My father died when I was 17. My mother also had dementia. My DH has had cancer which he thankfully survived.

I agree personality can be part of it, but some things are so huge, it's going to have an impact no matter what.

I'm interested in the concept of antinatalism as a theory. When I had my children I was young and optimistic and sure I could give them a great life. I did until the suffering, that antinatalism sees as a problem to inflict on your offspring just by having them, showed itself (sudden death of a child, diagnosis of other children and myself with similar and other conditions). While I wouldn't say my childhood was easy, I didn't have anything big like the loss of a sibling or parent. Unfortunately my children did. This wasn't and couldn't be foreseen. It wasn't something I could protect them from. So the idea of ethics around being born to be allowed to suffer is interesting.

That said, my children are happy to be here in spite of it and do enjoy their lives.