How do you deal with a existential crisis?

My friend invites me to her party.

I have two options. I can tell her no, because as fun as the party will be, I can't handle the fact that it's going to end a few hours after I get there. Or, I can go and have fun, despite knowing that it's going to end.

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.

I can't help you, but I can tell you that if you hold out for a couple of decades, you'll eventually stop worrying about it.

One day, you'll realize that you wake up in pain and suffer through most of the day; that you are constantly annoyed that young people think they're the first and only people to discover or experience things that you've seen people discover and experience countless times - but you are also hopelessly jaded and desperately envious of their naivety and ability to be passionate about something other than injustice. That despite fighting for decades to improve the world, and believing in some cosmic karma, you see evil people succeed over, and over, and have a deep recognition that the world is fucked and getting more fucked with every dollar. When this time comes, the Void will become appealing: a rest and relief from pain and suffering. One day, you will realize that you no longer lay awake at night anxiously fretting about not being alive, but are rather looking forward to it.

Hang in there, man.

Personally I find it’s easy to not fret about it because I can’t control it. Also, I didn’t mind not existing before I was born so I won’t mind not existing when my time is up.

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.

Radical acceptance. Do I want to cease to exist? Not particularly. Is it going to occur whether I want it or not? Yup. Is there some kind of afterlife? That's a boring question and I really don't care - there's no way that I can possibly know until I'm gone.

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.

Made a movie about it with a toy company's money.

Remember that the way you are right now doesn't have to be your ending, and you can grow beyond your roots and find your humanity again.

Postmodernist cynicism had it's time in the sun, but now it's time for a New Sincerity: So what if you live in a world where nothing matters, when you've always had the capability to choose what matters to you?

The greatest gift is that this life eventually ends.

Man, I can't wait until the day I don't exist anymore. My existential crisis is that I'm currently forced into existing.

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.

I just follow the Mr. PeanutButter philosophy on life at this point

"The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead"

Basically stop thinking so deeply about the enigmas you will never understand and try to enjoy the small things in life. A walk in a park. Helping someone less fortunate. Cooking a good meal, etc.

It wont be the first time I didnt exist

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.

The thing that helped me was "let go or be dragged".

Death will happen whether I stress out about it or not. Stressing about it just contaminates the time you have. So I gradually learned to focus more on the "isn't existence weird?!" than "death is coming". And when you really get into the swing of it, your limited time becomes timeless.

I was in your shoes a few years ago. I barely ate and struggled sleeping for longer than was healthy. My therapist recommended me the book: "Sophie's World", which is a both a story and also a crash course in philosophy and its history at the same time. Reading that slowly and reflecting on each chapter has personally helped me a lot in being more okay with existing.

You've already not existed before. And then you were born.

I agree with many here in that I expect not to be any more inconvenienced by death than I was before I was born.

A thought that I appreciate that others haven't mentioned is: The atoms that currently happen to think they're me have previously thought they were a fish or a raccoon or a different person, or whatever, and they will, eventually, again.

Since my life is probably just ripples on a pond, I am motivated to, ideally, make an interesting, pleasant splash. I hope I'm remembered fondly for the brief time (cosmically) that I'm remembered at all.

I also hope (perhaps against reason) that humanity (and whatever replaces us) are growing more compassionate, so that whatever interesting form my current atoms might join next may also have a decent time, and have a chance to leave more pleasant memories in others.

(And hey, maybe there's an afterlife. If so, maybe whoever runs it isn't one of the assholes that the con artists tell us to expect. Or if they are one of those assholes we've been promised, maybe they can be distracted and assassinated. I plan to be ready to roll with it, just in case.)

I just avoid thinking about it. There's other stuff to do. Find a hobby.

I think you will need to make the transition from negative nihilism to positive nihilism.

Aside from that I don't think I'm really convinced that interpreting the quantum wave function collapse when observed as the world not being loaded when you aren't looking at it is accurate. Even our best explanations could likely be a misinterpretation of what is really happening.

This channel is great by the way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP6iyVJ70OU

I used to think a lot about this and came to the terms that I just need to enjoy my life now. Not sometimes in the future. I don't want to die with a bunch of regrets. My life could end at any moment so does it really matter.

You read it and might understand what I mean, but you don't really have the same Realisation as me.

This post probably won't have an impact on anyone. But it might. Maybe someday someone will stumble upon one of my comments or posts and it will change their life for the better. That's also why I didn't delete my Reddit account with thousands of comments.

This is already way to long and I need to end this.

TL;DR Enjoy life while you can and don't try to worry about the end too much. Life is to short to live in fear of death

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.

I see this experience as a once in a universe chance to explore. I try not to worry about the inevitable while I have control of the now. Buddhism has a great philosophy on the impermanence of things and existing in this moment.

I just eventually decided there's nothing that can be done about it basically. Doesn't do any good worrying about an immutable fact of life.

Plus that's not what quantum mechanics says.

In order to measure a property of a particle something has to interact with it. When this happen it gets collapsed into a certain state. That's what they mean by observed.

Rant:

I had a pretty intense acid trip once and came to the conclusion that nothing matters, there is no meaning to life, there is only an illusion of free will, and most likely our existence and personal experiences in life will be completely forgotten within 3 generations (almost like we never existed to begin with). I was super duper depressed after that for several months.

It eventually gave me a different outlook on life though. If it's only temporary and there is no meaning, I can create my own meaning and enjoyment in life. Live in the moment, do what you want, and create as much meaning and enjoyment for yourself as you can while you have the opportunity. Don't worry about what others might think because eventually their existence is going to be forgotten as well.

The act of dying might suck, but being dead and not existing seems very serene. Sometimes things just sort of end.

I remember that I didn't exist before and that was fine.

A touch of humility helps too... why should I get benefits that beetles and dogs don't?

Life only exists because of death. I wouldn't want to take life away from the world by avoiding something I'm not meant to avoid.

What's the point of worrying about it. It's inevitable, and when it happens you'll not care because you won't be able to. So what does it matter

Come to the conclusion that you already havent existed for the previous at least 13.7 million years. Now you exist and after that you won't exist again.

I've never been afraid of death and non-existence, I've only been afraid of dying without having done or experienced as much as I could. Now that I've travelled, made friends, made art, been in relationships and worked and played beside passionate people, I feel like I've done things with my time. I don't want it to end but I'm not afraid of it ending, either.

Just enjoy the ride my friend. You are the product of such a mind bogglingly large sum of coincidence. You GET to exist. There are an infinity of combinations of atoms that never got to have self awareness. You. Won. Now do with it as you will. Life is shit, but it's far better than to never have gotten the chance to interact with the most incredible MMORPG that an infinite universe can scribe on a sea of chaos for you.

I think of how small I am in the universe. We're all just memories at the end of the day, so try to leave nice ones.

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.

The point of existence is to be happy, not the existence itself. I've found what and who I love and I'm happy. Fretting over something so inevitable feels like a massive waste of time.

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.

heh I juet dont

This feeling has been haunting my thoughts since my 20s and honestly it's just intensifying. The thought of it just sucks and puts me in a very nihilist mind state which sucks too. I don't know, I just can't accept that death is normal and everyone is ok with that, and we can't do anything about it, and one day, I'll be gone too. And I can't stop simulating those very last moments in my mind, and it too, sucks.

I actually had comfortable morning. I thank you for yet another fun experience of existential crisis.

So much happened before you opened your eyes for the first time, so much will happen after you close them for the last time.

quantum mechanics literally revealed that the world is not loaded when you are not looking

I don't know where you got that info, but that is not at all what quantum mechanics says. If you want a deep dive into what quantum mechanics actually says, here's a good video series from PBS by a real physics professor that explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wxG5KMAFik&list=PLsPUh22kYmNCGaVGuGfKfJl-6RdHiCjo1&index=1

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.

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

I struggle with what happens before that. That's the only relief I have, knowing that this shit parade will one day end and not matter at all.

You just replace that anxiety with a different fear.

I don’t fear oblivion, I fear it will keep me waiting. Not existing is a silent matter, living past your due as a broken, diseased husk or a person is a torture to you and those you cherish.

Death is a promise of rest, there’s no need to fear it. I’m a bit sad that I won’t get to witness most of the things I want to witness, but so be it.

Remember what it was like before you were born? It's like that

Try to remember, you have not existed before, this isn't something new.

And the fact that nothing matters means that we get to choose what matters ourselves, it could be money, fame, competence, love. You get to choose what to invest your time in and your choices will change the world bit by bit.

What kind of world do you want to help create?

I don't really care, and I don't really enjoy existing

All this time I thought that an existential crisis was having a crisis about the fact that you exist, not about the fact that you will not exist in the future.

As weird as it sounds, imagine actually existing forever in a way that keeps accumulating memories, experiences, and from the accumulation, redundancy, boredom, and ennui. Imagine the slow inevitable change of anything like heaven becoming more and more of its own hell on the relentless stretch into infinity.

An end point gives substance to the time before that end point, and even the end isn't truly an end because your matter and energy remain a part of the cosmos.

Absurdism - How to party at the end of meaning:

https://youtu.be/Jv79l1b-eoI

The Book of Ecclesiastes might be helpful here. "Everything is meaningless!"

Its conclusion is to find stuff you enjoy doing and do it because you enjoy doing it.

Have you tried therapy?

I choose to not die.

I sit inside a dark closet and listen to whale song. I also sometimes say that the awareness of our inevitable death is the only reason for why we enjoy life. While I'm still here, I want to leave my mark in this world, and that's why I make art. I can't avoid death, so I taught myself how to embrace it.

1. gratitude is very important

Not just existentially for a chance at being, but just muster as much of it as you can for the people around you, for every kindness shared with you, and for the beauty you get to experience. Even for bad shit that teaches you a lesson you can say thank you. It's literally free.

2. helping others

If your own shit is fucked, you might get a little humility, space, and grace by thinking about others. Check in on your friends, find an opportunity to volunteer, donate if it's in the cards for you.

3. hydrate and get enough sleep

When in doubt, these two might help

4. spend some time in nature

It should feel good to do this, so I wouldn't prescribe an amount of time, but at least 30 minutes of touching grass

After you have those four settled, I think it's worthwhile to start thinking about how you put your life together. In my mind, if you reach for things that resonate with you and you pursue it by doing things that you enjoy, you'll maximize your enjoyment, miss out on things that aren't for you, and meet the right people along the way. The consequences of your actions aren't permanent for you, sure, but if you live authentically and kindly, you'll affect others positively so that they'll have a better trip hurdling through space. Being as joyful as possible will have costed you nothing to help and, on the contrary, gotten you as close as possible to having your struggles be worthwhile.

I suppose I just spend less time thinking and more time feeling - smoking life like a loose cigarette from God on a balcony overlooking meaningless and the void. Alan Watts has a very romantic view of being the universe observing itself that never quite landed for me, but you should check out his lectures. They're very entertaining while being existential. Eckhart Tolle is a and is a little more self-helpy, but is still a fantastic source of knowledge about ceasing to create your own unhappiness.

What works for me may not work for you. I've found comfort and freedom from my existential dread on Epicurus' Four Remedies (tetrapharmakos), especially the second one. These are:

Don't fear gods;
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get;
What is terrible is easy to endure.

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus writes:

Get used to believing that death is nothing to us. For all good and bad consists in sense-experience, and death is the privation of sense-experience. Hence, a correct knowledge of the fact that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life a matter for contentment, not by adding a limitless time [to life] but by removing the longing for immortality. For there is nothing fearful in life for one who has grasped that there is nothing fearful in the absence of life. Thus, he is a fool who says that he fears death not because it will be painful when present but because it is painful when it is still to come. For that which while present causes no distress causes unnecessary pain when merely anticipated. So death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Therefore, it is relevant neither to the living nor to the dead, since it does not affect the former, and the latter do not exist.

The gist of this passage is that worrying about death is misguided. Death is not a state of being. As such, our sense of self only exists while we're alive. In this Principle Doctrines, Epicurus says:

Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved has no sense-experience, and what has no sense-experience is nothing to us.

To be you have to experience. And death marks when we no longer have any sense-experience. This understanding of death is like a dreamless night from which we never awake, says Socrates in Plato's Apology. Seen in this light, Epicurus is right that it is a bit foolish to suffer in life from fearing a state of being where there won't be anybody to suffer whatsoever. The existential dread is precisely this misguided fear.

Once you recognize the truth of this statement, just like magic, poof, that existential dread disappears. Of course, if you have a religious view that postulates life after death, with all the subsequent very human drama entailed by that belief, you're now dealing with a different kind of fear. And that fear is precisely what Epicurus addresses in his first remedy, Don't fear gods. His reasoning is also clear cut here.

By definition a God is perfect. It's immortal and has no needs. Because of this, any god has no worries. As such, gods, by definition, don't care about us. Caring about us implies they have some sort of need, thus rendering them less godlike.

This ties with the second remedy. The cherry on top is to simply remember this: just as we never worry with the time before we were born, it's also silly to worry about the time after we are gone.

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.

The fear of death is kind of an evolutional necessity. Otherwise our species wouldn't have survived. Without the fear of death we probably wouldn't be here. In some ways it's a crucial companion of existence. idk why, but seeing it as a condition of existence helps me put it in perspective. Like being alive is great and I guess this is the price I have to pay. Most of the time it's worth it.

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.

Camus!

A bit of clarification about the quantum might help calm your nerves: to observe something means something such as light must interact with the particle you try to observe, and that very interaction changes the result of the observation. It collapses the wave function, and what you observe is just one of the possible outcomes. It's not as crazy as you may think, but it's very understandable that it may at first seem magical.

I researched the heck out of it.

Key moments along the way was reading Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis and realizing that the idea of The Matrix wasn't just a neat idea but actually somewhat probable.

That led into a few years of intense reading of physics papers and forums to better understand physical underpinnings.

Eventually I realized that physics - while oddly overlapping with emerging trends in virtual world building - was inherently ambiguous enough I wasn't going to get a clear answer.

Around 2019 it struck me that physical underpinnings weren't the only place there might be an indication as to what was up, and reflected on the fact that the vast majority of virtual worlds I've seen have had 4th wall breaking acknowledgements of their creation buried in their lore.

So I revisited our collective theology through that lens and in only a few weeks found something that seemed to fit the bill, which I've researched quite a bit over the years since.

At this point, I'd wager continued existence after death at around 90%.

I have a very hard time seeing an original spontaneous reality that has quantum mechanics exhibiting everything from sync conflicts to lazy evaluation with a 2,000 year old text/tradition claiming we're a recreation of a long dead spontaneous humanity inside a non-physical replica of the earlier universe created by an intelligence eventually brought forth by that original humanity within light, and that the proof for this was in the study of motion and rest - specifically the ability to detect an indivisible point within things.

In the time since first stumbling across that text/tradition in 2019 a number of my concerns have managed to be addressed, from doubting sufficiently advanced AI was plausible to my objection that neural networks of electricity aren't literally light.

While it's possible that such a specific tradition buried into our lore in a document rediscovered after millennia the same time as when the world's first Turing complete computer was finished in Dec 1945 is a coincidence just as the fundamentals of our universe behaving similar to how we design virtual worlds for state tracking around free agent interactions could also be a coincidence - I find this to be diminishingly probable with each passing week.

That said, while it resolves the existential dread around death (the whole promise of the ancient text is that understanding what it says means knowing you won't taste death), it brings up a whole host of additional existential crises in its place (the text also promises that understanding it will lead to being disturbed).

TL;DR Maybe juggling existential crises is a necessary component of indulging in the self-awareness of one's own existence.

I had an existential crisis when I was probably 11. It haunted me and I didn't sleep for days because I was contemplating, constantly.

My belief now, after many psychedelic trips is very akin to the short novel "The Egg" by Andy Weir. Even if I have no idea what the truth could be, I take comfort in that fun read. It seems right to me

I've always been a fan of, we're the universe experiencing itself.

The same nagging notion sometimes claws at my brain as well.

The notion of consciousness not existing is especially troublesome for me to wrap my mind around. Logic says that no consciousness means nothing to perceive said lack of consciousness, therefore no loss there (for the subject, of course). That somehow... does not make it any better.

First time I've been through general anaesthesia I was wondering what it'd be like and a bit fearful of it. Happened in an instant, and I woke up what felt like immediately. Afterwards my conscious mind fixed that with perhaps artificially introducing passage of time to make everything fit. If I think back now, I certainly know some time had passed. But had it? And how much? No idea. Clock said around 3 hours, so I'll go by that.

Shortly thereafter I had a massive bleed and lost about 1/3 of my blood (by looking at amount of hemoglobin before and after the event). The more I lost, the less coherent I was and the less anything mattered. By the time I got to the ER, I had tunnel vision and survival mode on. But I wasn't scared for some odd reason... nothing mattered much. Not sure how close I came to actual death then, but it felt pretty close.

What I can advise... enjoy what you can, and don't waste your hate on anything. It's pretty much not worth it. Unless your life or the life of loved ones is in immediate danger, screw it. Guy cut you off in traffic? Fuck'em. It's not worth shortening your life for some rando with not enough respect for himself or others as to break the social contract. Just choose your preferred intensity of sustainable (for you) hedonism and go from there.

I also hope it gets easier with age, but the prospect of becoming more jaded that I am now is not appealing. Though if it makes everything easier...

I will say this, though. Not existing was (probably?) fine. But being brought into existence just for it to be taken away after a blink of an eye (in terms of billions of years of non-existence vs the average lifespan) seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

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.

I became a bit of an absurdist.

An existential crisis can only occur if we believe that we know what will happen in the future. It's safe to assume that we will one day die and there is no meaning in the universe. However, there is very little utility in dwelling on these thoughts. The important part of life is happening right now, in this moment. Distracting ourselves from this moment robs our lives of meaning and eventually delivers it to the abyss whence nothing returns.

Personally? I transitioned but everyone has a different reason for an existential crisis.

Repress repress repress!

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

"Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name."

As long as i am remembered, i exist. While my physical form may be rotting, i will hope that i made as much of an impact in this world as i did to me, and hope that my memory will never fade. It is for that reason that i keep soldiering on, never looking back, and trying to contribute to a better world.

You keep on existing (at least for now)

I do Shrooms, LSD, or DMT if I don't want to commit to all those hours.

Mushrooms and/or LSD.

I had a conversation with my girlfriend a few days ago about this. We are fine, everything is good, but if an asteroid would come in a few days, we would both be OK with it.

I guess that's weird to most people.

Honestly not well.

I've come to terms with the fact that I will one day die, and it could happen at any moment. The hard part is knowing that's true for everyone I love too.

I take comfort from the Good Book. And by that, I mean Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. The Tralfamadorean take is comforting. My conscious experience may its reach endpoint, but my existence will still have been, so to speak, embedded in the mountain range of time. The calypsos of Bokononism in Cat’s Cradle are good, too. Think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.

Furthermore, there’s a parable about the mountain, the one that a little bird comes along once every 100 years and scrapes its beak upon. When that mountain is worn away, only the first instant of eternity will have passed. Do we ever stop to think about what it would actually mean to exist forever? If it were infinite life, then once you’ve done everything that you enjoy for the billionth time and gotten so thoroughly bored of it, hey, you still have infinite time to go! After the Sun goes supernova and consumes the Earth, what will you do while floating in space for a few trillion years? If it’s existence after death, then a century or so of life will be as nothing compared to the vast sweep of eternity in the afterlife. Any number divided by infinity, and all.

Honestly, I figure that the urge to “live forever” is in actuality a desire to put off the existential crises to an indefinite time in the future. Cosmic procrastination. But living literally forever has its own (probably worse) existential horror. Everything has to end, especially in a universe that will end or at least cease being interesting, and that’s the only way that life can have any meaning.

The existential crisis comes no matter how long the Fates trim your strand, eventually you stare down the end. It’s just the price of admission.

Swipe ⬅️

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

I don't have a crisis, problem solved.

God wants me to do something before I leave this wonderful planet, that's why I live :)

Why do you care if you exist. Are you the Queen of england or something.