Anyone else feel like they wouldn’t want to have a life again?

[Sundaysighs]

Just thinking this, I’m very fortunate, have a good marriage, jobs, adult children who are good people with nice lives. No financial worries.

I had a mixed childhood, some good times but a mother with mental health and alcohol issues, father ‘nice’ but not really caring to our needs, all he wanted was an easy life and no hassle from our mother.

But, I hope there’s no such thing as reincarnation. I wouldn’t want to live again, life is generally hard work. Working full time, housekeeping, we have nice holidays but that’s not real life. I just feel like what’s the point in all this, we are born to work unless very lucky. There’s bereavement, loss of loved ones, pets, yes there are high points with births but even that results in the hard work of child rearing.

Im 50 this year, I find it hard to see the point, I feel almost guilty for having children, to bring them into this world where they’ll spend their lives working. They may suffer loss, ill health - who knows?

what’s the actual point to all of this. And I know I’m actually VERY lucky to have a home that’s paid for, a good marriage and no money worries. There are people with far less who probably literally work to be able to live. What’s the point in all of this?

I agree entirely, OP. It would have been better if I'd never been born, and I wouldn't want to come back. Further, it would have been kinder to my dd if I'd never had children.

Having said that, my granddaughter as a toddler informed me that we'd lived before, together, and that she'd had several other lives. She was too small to tell lies, she was only just learning to speak. It was very important to her that I listen! I've met other people I've 'known before'. I've also been to places for the first time that felt like 'home' (Isle of Man, Dunfermline, County Clare) and later discovered that I have ancestors from each of those places. So I suspect that it won't be a matter of personal choice whether I go round again or not.

Listening to Alan Watts on you tube sometimes spurs me on. It is based on daoism. We don't have to join or do anything to just listen to him occasionally. He can be very soothing.

I think I’m going to listen to him to get to sleep. He is very pleasant to listen to

I often wonder if I would love to have some kind of faith. I am absolutely atheist, and it would be nice to find comfort in a magical/spiritual belief system. I think life and death are all arbitrary (most of the time, anyway…) and it’s the connections you have with people that define your life. I have seen a lot of death and dying and nobody’s talking about their cars or kitchen appliances on their deathbeds.

Why do you say kinder to your dd if you’d never been born

is she too very unhappy and wishes she’d not been born?

Yes it is all hard work and sometimes gruelling. I had a very difficult early life and early adulthood and to be honest the only reason I stayed in my 20's is because I had children and there was no way I was ever going to leave them or do anything but my best for them.
So I do know what that sense of hopelessness and pointlessness looks and feels like.
But - and I know this sounds like a cliche - now I look at the beauty of nature and just things like the quality of light and for example the way light bounces off the leaves of trees, and the sound of the wind rustling in birch trees. And I feel like each day is a privilege and it's worth it just to keep seeing that.
It sounds like you are in a great position now so maybe it's time to have some time off, do something different to spark your life up again?

Maybe we are all living a second time already and don’t know it?

Why stop at second?!

in any event, I think navel gazing about reincarnation etc is all so pointless.

Just focus on doing what you can do to make this life as good as it can be

and in your case OP - that is sharing more of life’s chores with your grown assed adult children

One life is enough thank you. Money buys options, ironically having worked with and spent time with rough sleepers and the homeless often they seem more content than many well off/ rich and (outwardly looking at least) successful people I know.

Maybe it's because if you have nothing or not much there's nothing much to be taken away. Seems to me the more money the richer people have the more they want - a perverse addiction, esp. when those folks never seem happy, no matter what.

It was very often the poorer folks who gave to the charities I've worked for, the rich are rich precisely because they wont give or donate. Money mad, I think the phrase is. Money mad and as tight as a ducks ass, with just the annual count up to look forward to.

Rule number 1: Have fun, you dont always need money but it certainly helps.

ironically having worked with and spent time with rough sleepers and the homeless often they seem more content than many well off/ rich and (outwardly looking at least) successful people I know.

not my experience at all having been 10 years in the cheroot sector in this field.

Alcohols and drug use is rife and tells you Al you need to know about their level of contentment with life

What's the alternative?

If reincarnation exists, Im not coming back!

I'd do everything again in an instant. Even last weekend, yesterday, last summer, last year etc. Good times revisited. Sure, some stages are hard, difficult and not so great but the good times are fantastic and I'd happily do them all again to enjoy the joyful moments of which there are many.

Agree with a PP that you do sound depressed. Approaching 50 is a big milestone. Have you always felt this way? Hormones could be affecting your mindset too.

Of course there's no point. Why does there have to be a point to everything?

My mum now she's retired is constantly complaining there's no point to her life and that she's not "useful". She can't bear time alone, she's unable to entertain herself, she takes pleasure in very little and is the most negative person I know. With her, everything has to have a point, a result. It makes her extremely tedious and hard work.

Interesting. My mum is one of the happiest people I know. She has had a hard life with zero opportunities, but she takes pleasure in small things: gardening, her cat, music, many friends... I think it helped that both my sibling and I left home by 22!

Trying to emulate her and bring more small pleasures into my life. But I wouldn't be able to if I were cooking and cleaning and washing for 5 people!

No, she's ok, happy to be alive. But I've seen her suffer so much, and been responsible for some of her suffering. Because of who I am and the experiences I've had, parenting was probably a bad idea for me. But, I didn't realise that, and cracked on with it. I did my best.

Totally agree 💯

I have always believed in karma reincarnation and past lives. It makes sense to me.

My life started off fairly easy and then from my thirties it got harder and harder but perhaps many of us think this way.

You’ve got such insight

Embrace that. To make the next few decades much much better

If I understood it correctly this is kind of what Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus is about. Imagine being doomed to roll a rock up a hill and watching it fall down over and over again for eternity. You have two ways of reconciling the absurdity of this position: either you decide it’s completely pointless so you do it as unenthusiastically as possible and you hate every moment, or you rebel against the meaninglessness of it by throwing yourself into it completely and taking what joy from it you can (the view! the birdsong! the wildflowers on the hillside! etc etc). Tbf I did read it a long time ago; I should probably read it again and check that was actually what he meant…

I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

I like these sort of threads - very thought provoking.

On the whole I would do it again - have had a good life in many ways but I can see a few mistakes I made that I would change my decision on.

2 career errors that stand out - first one a job I turned down in my early 20s that opened a door to a better career (and mine has been very good by most standards). The second was that I took the wrong job in my late 30s that led to the most miserable 12 months of my life.

On the housing front I was quite conservative on my first purchase but with hindsight should have taken a much bigger mortgage and bought bigger place - probably be lot better off than I am now.

Lastly relationships - should have moved on much earlier from a couple of fairly lengthy ones in my 20s but if I'd done so may never have had my fantastic kids

And of course if I'd corrected my past errors who's to say I wouldn't have made other, possibly worse, ones

This is a philosophical theory called Nihilism. Personally I have no issues with one’s only goal in life being to enjoy themselves, it doesn’t disturb me that there isn’t a higher meaning.

Neither do i believe that questioning the meaning of life necessarily has anything to do with being depressed. I think maybe some people are just more acceptant of the tedious parts of life. I think this will resonate most with the ones amongst us that hate working and would like to have fun all the time!
My life is really good and i wouldn’t do anything differently, I have been married a very long time, we are still very happy, we are in a good financial position, i have friends, family ect so i have nothing to complain about but those pesky 5 days a week that i am spending at work.
I love everything outside work (and bear in mind i actually have a decent job) but the fun time available is just not enough.
We are child free and all our time is ourselves outside of work. When deciding on children the “meaning of life” definitely weighed in (do i want another genuinely full time job on top of my full time job, more worries, responsibilities, do i want to give life to children so they spend about 90% of their time on working and other relating matters…)
Add all the stuff that you have no control of in life (illness, loss, financial troubles ect). It’s very easy to be optimistic in life until something happens to you to make your realise that a lot of it is a lottery and that thought can be quite scary.
Now that i am here I absolutely want to be around and make the most of it but I completely understand the people that say that they wouldn’t necessarily want to do it a second time around, i don’t think it’s such a gloomy thought, maybe they just have different expectations in life. Interesting subject.

I understand OP. I'm the same age as you and, in recent years, have seen so much tragedy in the lives of people, some which has affected my own older children, I've sometimes felt a sense of guilt about bringing them into a world to experience so much pain. When they were born, these realities weren't on my radar.

I wouldn't want to come back unless I could ensure things would be different next time around as far as my childhood and some other things. I do still find lots of good things in life though. I focus on the little things that bring me joy. This world still has a lot to offer in the little things day to day.