To not really understand life and think it's all a bit boring and pointless?

[thisishowgooditgets]

I try and romanticise life but sometimes I just think 'is this really it?' I have had the day off and was on a walk earlier, it was sunny and felt like Spring and I was out in nature and I could appreciate it, but at the same time I felt like 'is this really all there is? Is this as good as it gets?' All I could think about was that tomorrow I had work.

On my walk I saw some young children (maybe 3 or 4 years old) running around and chasing each other and I miss that. I miss being able to live in the moment, without realising the long stretch of the mundane that lies ahead.

Even special things everyone look forward to are the same. There's no magic to life anymore, it's all just mundane.

I don't think I'm depressed, just feel like there must be more to life than this? I'm back and forth with my faith, and I think that's part of the reason I'm struggling. Why did God bother?

I was thinking that the same thing this morning op. We have a lot of struggles of various kinds with our four kids. We put so much effort in and for what really? So they grow up get jobs, get married or whatever else they decide to do and then the whole thing goes round again but with them as the parents... it might just be because all four of our kids are hard work just now and none of them recognise the sacrifices being made for them but I just feel like everything is a bit pointless tbh.

I'm not religious, but amen to this!

I don't think it's necessarily a sign of depression to recognise that there probably isn't some grand meaning to everything - that we're born by chance and whatever we fill the years in between with, we'll still die at some point.

But I also don't think that has to be a miserable thing. I have one pointless little life and I try and appreciate the good in it because - I'm here, I may as well. So no, there's nothing inherently exciting about it being spring but I may as well enjoy the sunshine. There's no grander meaning to going to my job or divine cause for me - but I spend my time doing something I like with people I like. There's joy in the mundane, too.

Questioning your faith seems to have taken the shine off the good in life: if you believe everything good has come from God, and that there's some larger plan, it gives everything around you meaning. But when that's been your framework and then you're no longer sure that's the case, I imagine it could feel a bit rudderless - like you need a 'reason' for everything to be the way it is. And sometimes - it just is. That's got beauty in it, too: that things can be nice just because they are and we choose to find joy in them, without there being more to uit.

You’ve got to work out what your priorities are.
This is so corny, but I’ve worked out mine is love.

Does there have to be a point to enjoy it? It's a beautiful planet, food is amazing, music is sublime, people are mostly lovely, the other animals are magic, swimming, running, booze, books, travel, bonfires,etcetcetc

There’s that Maya Angelou quote
’I have learned that people forget what you’ve said, they forget what you did, but they never forget how you made them feel’
Love doesn’t die.

I'm quite often a glass half empty sort of person, but I do my best to hide it, no one wants to be bummed out right?! I definitely think life is pointless in as much as my life doesn't feed into anything bigger. It's inconsequential really. There's 8 billion of us alive right now and many more than that dead. One individual is nothing really, isn't it?!

I don't even know my great grandparents names, nor do I have any desire to, let alone understand the sort of people they were. I wouldn't expect anything different of my great grandchildren when I'm long since gone. I am however glad we are here, alive, in 2023. The past was much harder than we have it today, imagine being alive in the 1600's for example with squalid conditions, death and disease, no electricity. The future also with AI and advanced technology and warfare, no thanks. I think this could be the sweet spot.

The future isn't promised to any of us, so we have to appreciate the life we have been given and try and take enjoyment from each day. That is as much point as you are going to find, to try and be happy and content and to try and make those around you the same. Enrich other people's lives and that shall in turn enrich your own. For when you die, you will remember nothing of it, and before too long, no one will remember anything of you.

It was a beautiful day today and I felt joyful out in nature with the dogs. I don’t work because my health is fragile so I get to do this every day. It’s the only thing worth living for.

Honestly I couldn’t live the life you live. Yes we have easier lives than animals but they’re wild, doing the things they should be doing. Most humans are just in open prisons. Put an animal in a zoo and it goes insane. We blame its environment and we try to improve it. Sit humans at a desk for at least eight hours a day followed by drudgery for the rest of the time, and we blame the human. We can’t change the environment so we diagnose depression and prescribe medication.

If I had no other option it would be van life for me. Yes it would be hard but at least I’d have a life.

There was a good article about this in The Times on Saturday, it's called anhedonia and is defined as the inability to feel pleasure in life. It seems to be fairly common
I can't link as I get the paper version and there's a paywall online

I've survived things that kill most, including two long periods in ICU on life support. I am also atheist. My life is simple but I find joy and meaning in my somewhat limited life and no longer sweat the small stuff.
I do have dark periods, (I think anyone with a life threatening condition does) especially when you spend long periods in hospital but I know they'll pass and I aren't ready to give up yet. I'd love to see all my DC settled in adulthood, (youngest is 16) that's a goal that at one point seemed unreachable. I don't want to leave a legacy that harms anyone. I wasn't ill when I had DC but once I had them, I find more and more that they are my reason to being, the point to my life.

Honestly I couldn’t live the life you live. Yes we have easier lives than animals but they’re wild, doing the things they should be doing. Most humans are just in open prisons. Put an animal in a zoo and it goes insane. We blame its environment and we try to improve it. Sit humans at a desk for at least eight hours a day followed by drudgery for the rest of the time, and we blame the human. We can’t change the environment so we diagnose depression and prescribe medication

This is a very interesting point. Human life has changed immeasurably in a relatively short space of time - compared with the length of time we evolved as cavemen / hunter gatherers / subsistence farmers. Many of us are able to adapt but perhaps some of us cannot be happy in this kind of life.

”This kind of life” meaning mainly indoors, less physical, less connected with nature.

Yes and largely (in the West at least) very materialistic and consumerist. A great many people think they will be happier the more new stuff they acquire.

I soooo agree, life is about the friendships, relationships and people we meet along the way, not the "things"

I have a sardonic sense of humour, so I'm both amused and somewhat comforted by the fact that the human race is just an utterly pointless quirk of biological and chemical happenstance. It's liberating, and frees you to do whatever the hell you like with your life, because there is no ultimate authority to judge you, no reason for your existence beyond the fact your parents successfully procreated and therefore nobody and nothing you are born owing anything to, so you can choose to do seek your own happiness by whatever means that takes free from guilt or feeling that you are in someway falling short of expectations.

If you feel unfulfilled or that you are falling somewhat short of your own expectations, then the power to remedy that lies entirely with you, and if you are worried about outside perceptions, then the power to change that also lies entirely with you. I couldn't give a single shiny shite about how other people view what I choose to do with my life, because it's my life, not theirs, and I need neither their consent or approval for my choices, so I think people who worry far too much about legacy or reputation need to chill a bit.

The universe functioned perfectly well before any of us were ever around, and it will continue on long after the entire human race has ceased to exist, so I can't understand why anyone would be particularly bothered about their place in something that is inconsequential in any case. I have never understood why people crave a 'higher purpose' when there is absolutely nothing about the universe, or humanity's place within it, that requires one.

Eh… even if it is pointless who cares, lots of things are pointless. I’m certainly not going waste the time I have worrying about some great meaning behind it all.

Even if if there is some grand purpose to it all… I still don’t care.

Let me guess at some point you were told to make a difference…leave the world a better place… have a passion that leaves a lasting mark? (Am I getting close?).

Meh.. do the best you can with what you have.

I don’t have any beliefs, and I don’t think you necessarily need purpose to be happy (there is much joy in small things), but some people really do need purpose. Perhaps you do?

While you are thinking on it Bill Bryson’ A Short History of Nearly Everything is fantastic bath in the sheer wonder of creation. Would highly recommend giving it a read.

@PiccaZ sounds like the plot in Veronica decides to die. Good tips btw

I think the same op quite often. I also think why the hell do we have to go to work every day to get money to pay for shelter/food/electricity/clothes etc instead of staying how we was thousands of years ago working on farms and building shelter running in fields and amongst animals instead of being indoors and keeping pets... but maybe that's just me 😁

I get this sometimes
More like... have to go to work to pay the bills for a house that you're not in because you're at work for a car that you drive to work and so on

Every single second alive is a gift that was the result of utterly infinitesimal odds of it ever happening.

It's easy to forget. Especially when surrounded by so much influence.

Bruno Bettelheim said (I paraphrase): There is no purpose to life, but we must behave as if there is.

I can't remember the context but guess it was about ideas of God. I've always rather liked this quote as it implies the idea of living well and making our own meanings because this is the only life we have.

On the other hand towards the end of his life he suffered form depression and took his own life.

Drop the religion, and get a new job. These two things seem to be dragging you down.

I guess when you have really happy moments, that's when you think how great it is to be alive so you just need to create more of those. Even just watching a beautiful sunset, enjoying a lovely meal, watching a couple of friends have a laugh, reading a good book etc etc

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Alan Wilson Watts

I find joy in the fact that I even exist- what are the chances?
I don't understand why people cling to life if they are totally disillusioned by it, generally humans must feel there is joy somewhere on the horizon or more people would simply give up.