Atheists of lemmy, what is your coping strategy when things goes downhill?
I am at an accepting stage that not everything that happens in your life is in your control. When things goes really bad and you dont have much control on it, I would assume a person who believes in god or religious figures has their belief system as a coping mechanism. For example praying to the god and so on.
I passed that stage where you believe a single entity has a complete control of each and everything happens in this entire universe. So falling back to god and thinking it is all according to the plan and he will find out some solution is not really an option for me. At the sametime I also acknowlede that there are some gray areas where science can't provide a logical explanation so as to why this is happening to some of the life events.
So to atheists of lemmy, how do you cope up with shits that happens in your life that you can't explain logically and you really don't have much control?
We atheists are quite capable of talking to imaginary friends too. We just have no delusions that they're real.
I know I've asked for more than a few things to please work out. Couldn't tell you who I was asking though.
So true, when things get tough I kneel in front of my poster of Sephiroth and mumble incoherently about the Lifestream.
Works as well as when I used to pray tbh.
Ride the wave of chaos on your surfboard of acceptance and enjoy the ride, it's all we've got.
The only time I truly feel alive
Identify which parts I do control and work on them to improve my situation, ask for help from others/professional services if thing go too far.
Just because your faith doesn't work how you want it to doesn't mean you are all alone and have to deal with everything alone.
Same here. Focus on what you can control, seek help where possible with things you can’t. If there’s absolutely nothing that can be done about something, there’s no use in worrying about it anyway.
It doesn’t even cross my mind if there is a “greater meaning” when something challenging happens in my life.
What do you mean by "cope"? How do I explain it? Either shit happens because of bad luck (e.g. A bird shits on me) or because someone did something wrong (e.g. Somebody got distracted while driving and broke my side mirror). It's not supernatural entity, it's just statistical probability.
How do I cope mentally? Tv, videogames, a beer o two and a nice meal. Talk to my wife. Remember to play with my kids.
I've always found it easier to accept that the universe is fundamentally random and today is my turn in the barrel than wonder why God did this to me.
I accept the fact that I don't understand everything, and I get high.
If I can't have control over shit happening, then I just don't care.
I think it was Další Lama who said: "If a problem has a solution, there is no reason to worry. If there is no solution, worrying will not help."
Can you elaborate what you mean by things that science can't explain?
Everything came from randomness and is mostly narrated by it, and there's no escape from it. You may hit the lottery or end up with a rare fatal disease any time, your life will be changed and there's nothing you can do about it. It's not about god granting you awards or punishing you, it just happens. From this POV getting depressed because I went through x feels like getting depressed because water flows.
Life is painful, also joyful, beautiful and really ugly, gross and amazing. You're supposed to fall, get hurt and then get up and run a bit more until you can't anymore. Every good and bad thing will pass in time
I was talking about the same randomness , as in why it was happening. As you mentioned for example having a rare disease or an accident, you could well explain it with diagnosis and reports on how it formed and what leads to it and so on. But why this is happening to certain people is not really have any control. I mean It is that randomness that we cant explain or atleast I do not understand.
I like your take on the life and how you are accepting all the aspects like pain and joy at the sametime. This to shall pass.. Yay!!
It sounds like you're coming at science from a religious or philosophical standing, and blurring the lines.
Science can explain and account for everything in life, whether you understand it or not.
There are plenty of things that we as humans do not yet understand, but it's all still science.
The question of 'why did this have to happen to me/them' is completely null and void; it's a question stemming from a belief system, not a scientific system.
Person X got cancer because they were genetically predisposed to it, or they encountered a environmental occurance that caused it. Person Y had a heart attack at 50 and died because they had a preexisting heart condition, or they were unhealthy, or an environmental incident occurred that initied it.
The philosophy of it is not scientific, it's philosophical and has no valid place in a scientific explanation.
Discussing philosophy can be thought provoking, entertaining, enraging, and enlightening all at the same time, but it's totally different to discussing science.
As for coping strategies, accepting that some things are simply out of your control is a good place to start. Easier said than done at times, I know. We as humans gravitate towards belief, we've likely evolved to do that. But again, that's science. Know your limits, understand that you won't always have control, and accept things that are beyond your reach. Life won't always be fun, but you're the only person in charge of your own thoughts and feelings. Use that to your advantage whenever you can.
My cousin was a valued member of his rural mountain community. At a Reno air show, the rudder of a P51 racing plane failed (the Galloping Ghost ), and in a stroke of bad luck, veered into the grandstands, exploding messily. Most racing-plane accidents wreck in unoccupied territory, so only the pilot dies. In this case dozens of spectators were injured and nine people died. My cousin was the last of them.
Survived by a wife and two boys, his community couldn't imagine why God might have gathered him up that day.
There's no rhyme to it. My cousin got picked in the wrong lottery and perished.
I am so sorry about your cousin. Hope you and the loved ones have the strength to deal with the pain. Dont know what else to say :(
It was in 2011, so at this point it's history we've long processed. I bring it up because for me losing my cousin (possibly the last family beyond my parents with whom I still had contact), it was a clear lesson that ours is a chaotic and unjust world and that if we as a society want it to be more just, it is up to us to make it more so.
We have to be the compassion we want to see in the world, even if this means risking betrayal or being taken for granted.
I am not a powerful official that can affect policy that affects the community, but I can treat others with kindness and compassion as often as opportunity allows. It's not transactional or based on who deserves it, but simply recognizing everyone else also lives in a world that sometimes hurl airplanes at them without cause or reason. (Or, to point at a more recent example, a global epidemic to which our response programs were unprepared.)
Exactly, as you and some others mentioned in the thread, we need to be concentrating on what we can do rather than worrying about the things that are out of our control. Glad that you are in better position now and choosing the path of kindness. To be frank at times I feel all this world need is more kind souls.
Honestly, I think we have it a lot easier than the theists in that regard. If someone dings my car, I find that my dog has cancer, or I lose my job, I don’t have to address the problem of evil. I don’t need to figure out how to square the idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god with misfortune. I don’t need to wonder if I am being punished or tested, and I don’t have to worry about prayers that aren’t being answered.
There are multiple non-theistic philosophies and religions that offer a framework for understanding and coping with negative events. Neither Buddhism nor Taoism have an explicit dependency on anything supernatural, especially in the schools and forms most popular in the West. The general idea is that we need to be less attached to certain outcomes and that our suffering arises more from our wanting the world to be how it isn’t.
There’s also a large number of non-theistic schools in Western philosophy that have taken their own various approaches to questions ranging from the meaning of life and the meaning of suffering to how to identify and pursue the good. There’s multiple schools of existentialism, of course, but I would even think that writings on the nature of justice (eg John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Peter Singer), the nature of the ego and human experience (eg Thomas Metzinger), and even works of film and literature can help approach an understanding, which is itself perhaps the best coping mechanism.
Don't rule out Nietzsche either, with his ideas on the creation of your moral system, becoming a "god" unto yourself, exercising will through art, and will-to-power by helping others (and thus altering their lives and will in a much more effective way than harming them as a "show of force" / what most think of as power). I highly recommend studying his thinking very deeply when anyone abandons the idea of god. And remember, even though god is dead, in thus spoke Zarathustra the character (representing one of us, who knows that god is dead) never told that to the monk, but rather envied his ability to believe. Believing in a god is by far better than taking that responsibility on yourself, but for us, it is no longer possible. We ought to envy that kind of belief.
But at the same time, any dogma that harms us or others (Christo-fascism, all forms of theocracy, etc.) is objectively bad except to those in charge of it. Which is no one except one who "speaks for god," and protestant Christianity has abandoned such a figure and taken on a life of its' own. It helps no one, not even a person in power, and thus should be abolished.
But as I said, I envy those who hold other beliefs. For now we must take the responsibilities of god onto our own shoulders.
I think the idea of being envious of religious people is grounded in two fundamental errors. First, it is attributing a level of solace to religiosity that is rarely, if ever, achieved in practice. Yes, you can find religious people who are content, but the same applies to Zen monks who have no god but do have a grounding in a framework that explains the world and their role in it. As the Buddhists point out (if we can take that path), discontent and suffering comes from wanting the world to be different than it is. Whether one subscribes to a Buddhist philosophy or thinks everything is in God’s hands and is therefore all for the best, the key is accepting what happens. Or in the Taoist saying “Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” My point here is that it’s absolutely not religion that’s responsible for that, but rather a philosophical point of view that can also be arrived at via non-theistic justifications. I’d argue it’s even easier without the god part, since you don’t have to rectify with the problem of evil. If an all-powerful and loving god gave your newborn child a fatal disease, that’s a lot to have to figure out. That’s where you get all of those ridiculous, stomach-turning platitudes. If your child developed cancer because biology is kind of stupid (and I’m saying that as a biologist), it is still a cause of sadness and mourning, but there’s no causal party involved.
The second part is that whether you’re reading the lives of the saints, talking to friends, or pouring over the latest Pew survey on religion and life satisfaction, you’re looking at self-reports.
Do a thought experiment. Pick a cult-like religion. It could be Mormonism, adventism, Scientology, or something more like a David Koresh or desert dwelling new age thing. Imagine running through questions about satisfaction and happiness with those members, given they know you’re interviewing them on the basis of the religion they hold and (essentially) whether they’re good people because it’s working for them. Or talk to former members of those cults about how they acted versus how they really felt and what that realization was like.
At the end of the day, we as atheists have fewer reasons for existential dread because once you progress past the theology of a twelve year old, there’s far more problems introduced than answered by religions, and a large percentage of those problems come from the mythological component of their philosophies. I don’t go around trying to pick arguments or disabuse people, and I very, very much get Marx’s point, but I think he under-theorized the social and psychological dimensions and that he could be over-generous.
Music, poetry, booze.
Breathe, think, breathe, think, repeat. Life goes on until it doesn't. My sister died last year at 42 years old, she taught music to underprivileged children. The universe gave her a tumour in her brain so there isn't much you can do in this existence but keep breathing and thinking, until you stop doing both.
You will find beauty and ugliness, happiness and sadness, absorb it all and accept it knowing that as far as we know we are the only piece of the universe that is aware of the universe.
I'm not a control freak, I know that most things in life are outside my control, and I'm generally fine with it. And when those things outside my control are bad for me, I just... accept them while doing whatever I can to make them less bad?
Two people here mentioned media and booze. For me they're refreshment; they distract me from the problem that I can't solve, but they won't help directly. (Sometimes you do need a refreshment.) Same deal with cooking or talking with my pets.
Can you provide an example where science cannot explain a situation, because I can't honestly think of any.
If you get sick then that's biology.
If your boiler bursts and your house floods that's an engineering problem.
If lightning strikes your house and your home burns down then that's just physics.
Just because it sucks doesn't mean science can't explain it, and it doesn't mean that it's inexplainable.
Ultimately everything is either physics or politics, both of which are very easy to understand at a basic level. Especially politics.
Examples are like losing the loved ones in your life, or someone getting a disease at a young age and not able to live a proper life and so on. You could argue that as per the science that is how life works. Like if you are born you must age and die eventually. Or as per the science you can diagonse the disease and come up with an explanation on how things happens and what lead to it. My why question was more of why this is happening at the first place and absurd randomness of it. Or on philosophical level, I can't comprehend the meaning of certain events. For example you dont even learn or improve anything from such events. And my original question was not to solve any of this for the entire universe, but how people are dealing with with such situations..
There is no why. The Universe has no inherent purpose or meaning. Nothing happens for any particular intentional reason. There was no plan. There is no plan. It can't be absurd because absurd implies there is some way things are supposed to be like, but there isn't a right, just or correct way for things to exists. Things aren't random though, everything in the universe is intricately interrelated and everything affects everything else at some level on some minuscule way and what ends up happening is the result of a million million years of causal collision of particles and forces interacting.
The nice part of this all is that meaning and purpose can be anything you want it to be. They're human concepts and thus humans can mold them freely. You only have one life, savor the bittersweet, elate on the joy, for it all will pass. We are just the accumulative force of carbon combining in a futile attempt to stave off entropy, resulting in an data flow that makes the universe experience itself. And that I find to be wonderfully delightful.
Now sit down and eat your breakfast.
Not OP, but there is some stuff. One big example is qualia. How does matter give rise to actual feelings, experiences of things? This isn't something we can measure directly and it actually seems like it won't be something we ever can measure. Might also be able to use something like "what was there before the big bang?" and that kind of thing.
Of course, the fact that science can't explain something doesn't really justify falling back on magic as an explanation though. Some stuff just may not have an answer.
you see johnny, your mum dying is actually just a demonstration of biology, quite marvelous. and your sadness is actually just psychology. isnt science wonderful
Yeah. Science isn't another religion. It's just the universe existing. Sometimes crap stuff happens, that doesn't mean atheism is invalid just because it would be nice if something else existed. Wanting it doesn't make it exist, sorry.
"It is what it is."
This + the occasional LAN party with the boys has gotten me through just about anything
Radical acceptance. And then to follow, build a core of self supporting psychology structures to live by, which sounds complex, but it's just things like
Emotional regulation tools. Distress tolerance. Self support concepts.
Let me know if you want me to expand on anything.
This is really good advice.
I have it pretty fucking good in the grand scheme of things so just remember that
I live like a king compared to probably 90% of this world and 99.99999% of every human that ever lived. I am getting to see awesome and awful things even my recent ancestors couldn't grasp. And with any luck I'll kick the bucket right when the air conditioning goes out for the last time.
Sometimes I think about "legacy" but in the end the eventual heat death of the universe is gonna make that irrelevant too.
What do you mean? Why does that matter, what would that explanation do for you?
I can explain most things logically, that is not the problem. The problem is that the logical explanation still usually sucks. Being religious would only provide an explanation - that can't really be true, let alone helpful. Presumably I'd rationalize everything with how an infinitely loving, powerful and all-knowing God needed me to have a shit time, for reasons, because that makes a lot of sense. That belief wouldn't change much, other than potentially leading me to make profoundly irrational choices. I can manage that perfectly fine on my own, thanks all the same.
Music, games, booze.
Look at Stoicism. It is a very interesting philosophy from the Greeks , you can learn more here : https://youtu.be/EFkyxzJtiv4?si=ZQSdcIz58lnfl-Og
This is the best secular world view I've found. Since leaving religious thinking behind, I wondered abit between nihilism and the world is what you make it. The Dichotomy of Control really resonated with me. Funny enough, I started rereading Epictetus' Enchiridion![]()
The book, How to be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci is good to. I found it more accessible. Here is a video with him https://youtu.be/qjz5a8X9LjU?si=0OsptyOS7MvHiYw0
Thank you!! It is really an intersting perspective. I will research more in this.
Looks like the stoics found a life raft from reddit
Sorry English is not my first language, what you mean by life raft? Like you mean stoics found a way out of Reddit?
When things go to utter shit you just...buckle down and deal with it? Turn to friends and family for support and comfort?
I make things better in ways that I can.
Not really sure about this one. Science doesn't have answers for really big questions, like why does the universe exist. But for stuff smaller than that, like "why do I have some disease", or "why did I lose a loved one" ... or just "why did I lose 200$ dollars at the casino" well science tells us a lot about how it's all one giant lottery we have been playing involuntarily, and we are all really bad at it.
We take chances just by existing. It's literally called a genetic lottery. We take a chance by getting in a car or stepping out onto the street to go to the market. Just by loving people we take the chance that something could take them away. Life deals you a hand. You win some, you lose some. You don't get to decide what your odds are. The best you can do is play the hand you've got. Which to be honest, is a lot less control than we tend to think we have. And even then, most of us don't play our hand all that great, cause we are thrust into the game of life without a practice round. And we are often too young and arrogant to listen to those who have come before us who already learned the hard way. Worse yet, we see few of our peer's mistakes, so we have a poor sense of what success and failure really looks like.
Science tells us about the gambler's fallacy, the human bias towards falsely thinking that the universe tends towards some kind of fairness or equilibrium which is patently false (consider how little the gambler expects "good luck" to turn bad, therefore why gamble at all if it always equalizes?). Karma doesn't mean the universe owes you exactly what you put in. Life doesn't hand out exact change.
Science also tells us about how we (humans) don't truly understand randomness. In nature, successive repetitions of some outcome of luck are vastly more common than we tend to think they are. We see a series of bad luck outcomes and say "that's not natural, this can't be real" when in fact it is often the natural laws of the universe on full display.
Despite it all, even if the game of life makes no promises to you at all, it sure as hell is better than not playing the game at all. Regarding karma, the only thing you can be sure of--and forgive me for using a dead meme but it is apt--is that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
Edit for the pedants: gambler's fallacy actually means that past results of independent events do not predict future outcomes, but that's basically what I just said.
That is a lot of wisdom in a single comment. I am re-reading it a lot.. Yay! Thanks for sharing
You get back to work.
When things go poorly for me, I just remember that everything is temporary. At some point in the future, it’ll be better.
For me, the existential struggle is coming to terms with my irrelevance (or our collective irrelevance -- our civilization and species has some big challenges ahead in the next couple of centuries). It's not that it's a bad time to be a naturalist, but it's just a bad time to be human and depend on a society that is supposed to continue without end.
That said, I've only acclimated to the idea that only oblivion and irrelevance await me. Living day to day is augmented by social and hedonistic comforts: I pet my cat and my dog. I take care of my wife. I play video games and limit how often I look at the world burning up.
We've encountered similar tropes in our apocalyptic fiction. Neo learns that his entire life was a dream, a construct in the matrix. I remind kids they really are in a YAF dystopia in which the education system is trying to mold them into interchangeable, disposable, replaceable soldiers and laborers to be inserted into billionaire vanity projects, used up and discarded, and their story is how they escape that paradigm.
That's our story too.
Some years back I was temporarily feeling suicidal. But several things stopped me.
Since I'm an atheist, I don't believe there is anything after death. This is the only chance we get. Is permanently extinguishing that small temporary bit of conscience a productive way to handle things? Would it have solved the issue I was having? It would have ended the problem sure, but it wouldn't have solved it. And it mean there were no future opportunities for happiness or good.
The only thing that seems certain in life is change. I was in a shitty place mentally and was really struggling in the specific situation I was in. But I knew that it would change. Would it change for the better or change for the worse? Would it be a lateral change? There was no way to tell, but ending it all meant no more change could occur. So I waited it out and change happened. And I eventually found myself in a better spot with a change in scenery.
I think that is a good way to deal those situations. Happy that you are in a better space now.. Cheers!!
Soon I'll be dead and then it won't matter anyway.
absurdism! "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" is what keeps me going
When things happen you can either control the outcome or not. If you can, and things go sideways, you simply made the wrong decisions along the way and can learn. If you can't, find out what small parts you CAN influence and do your best to make things turn out okay. If you are totally powerless, remind yourself that nothing lasts forever and you can wait it out until an opportunity presents itself or the situation changes.
Sometimes you will find yourself in a ruinous situation beyond your control. Lower your standards until you have something you can act on - even if it's going to sleep to give your mind and body some rest. One step at a time, even if they're small steps and you're not quite sure where you'll end up. Find any positive you can. That said, allow yourself to get angry, sad, or anything else you need to feel to vent the stress - but afterward, find a positive and hold it.
Religious people have a built in community around their place of worship or shared interests. If something bad happens, the good people in that community will do what they can to offer support - this is usually mistaken for "god is great, look how he sent you to help." That's just silly (and rather insulting).
Atheists don't have that default support community, but hopefully we have friends and co-workers, people on our dart league, etc. who would jump at the chance to help out when things go sideways. Be social. Help others. Be part of a community of good people, regardless of their beliefs, and they can help steady you when life gets mean.
This is something I really don't understand. Maybe you can explain it to me.
For me a "normal" day would be one where earth looks like the moon. The fact that we have all kinds of plants and animals is amazing and the fact that we have buildings, technology and culture is something to be very proud of, because every day that you don't run around killing people or doing other horrible things is a day where you overcame your instincts and helped hold up culture. So to me every day, even one that you would deem "shit that happens in your life", is absolutely amazing and something to be proud of.
But for someone who believes that there is a God a normal day would be one where everything works out great, and it would just be because God took care of it. A bad day would mean that for whatever reason this God decided to let you suffer. And this is supposed to make you feel good?
Isn't it uplifting to say that you can't explain why bad things happen to you? Do you really think it's uplifting to think that bad things happen to you because an all powerful being decided that you deserved it?
🎶 Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry
Be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry
Be happy, don't worry, be happy now 🎶
Works for me most of the time :)
On a more serious note, I learned to accept that not everything will always go my way. But not every bad thing is as bad as it might appear at first, and sometimes by rolling with the punches you can come out on top. Or at least end up in a better position than you started out in.
Of course I've never had to deal with truly catastrophic life events, so take that advice with a grain of salt.
I walk a lot. Head down to the river and whistle for the crows that know me to come down so I can give them some peanuts. Talk with friends and family.
To be fair, though, I do pretty much the same thing when I don't need to cope.
In my opinion, accepting that things are out of our control is a basic requirement of life, just as we have to accept the force of gravity exerted on us.
I think it's weird and some people have told me I'm crazy, but I tell myself "It'll all eventually work out, but maybe for the worst." I find getting hung-up on if something will resolve in my favor often hinders my ability to influence the situation, can cause self-fulfilling prophecies, and is often more distressing than when the negative outcome is reached.
I also consider our insignificance on a cosmic scale, and find a strange comfort in imagining that our problems are just as trivial and irrelevant as ants, and that I won't care when I'm dead anyway.
Finally, if you're experiencing any death anxiety, I've always found a great exercise to be imagining what it was like before you were born. Did you have any pain or fear? Did you wish desperately to be alive? No. You simply did not exist for billions of years, and that is the state in which we can expect to return. That doesn't sound so bad to me.
My coping strategy is stubbornness, I may not win, but I'll be fucked if I'll let the rest of the world beat me. I refuse to give up.
Good for you. Be strong. Though I can't say the same to me because I'm not sure if it's worth it to suffer.
I used to know a guy with some syndrome that made his body stop growing around 6 years old, but not his head. He was in his 20's, in a wheel chair playing pool. Pulled the stick back, and broke his collar bone. He kinda winced a bit and said 'pain don't hurt' them finished playing with the other hand.
His condition also gave him brittle bones. Seeing him shrug that shit off, knowing it was just one of many, I got nothing to complain about. My sorry, but healthy ass, can just shut the fuck up and carry on. Everyone has hard times, and they hurt like hell. Sometimes stepping out of your own can give us perspective.
It's still important to acknowledge the pain, since the pain is a sign or signal that your body was damaged and can potentially permanently ruin your body. Though, that doesn't mean you should avoid pain forever, and it's impossible to avoid pain forever, perhaps only delaying it. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so I guess it's fine as long as you're alive.
I commune with the universe by contemplating it and my place within it. The immensity and my insignificance, yet the fact that I recognize my own existence, brings peace.
I've always found a strange comfort in cosmic insignificance.
Stoicism has been tainted a bit recently by attention from some fringe groups, but stoicism itself is still a very enlightened way to see the world, IMO
Aurelius gang 👏
Everything that happens is like water flowing down a river. I don't get mad at gravity and the water for acting according to the laws of physics, why do that for other things? It's much easier to accept it for what it is and try to move forward to the best of my ability
there's more to the analogy/perspective but I don't feel like putting it into words. Hopefully it's helpful
I just remind myself of a few key principles:
Just gotta find what keeps you going. It's different for everyone.
The universe may not care about me, but there are people in it who do
These are really striking words for me. Thank you !!
Epictitus suggested that the world consists of two things, those you can assert control over and those you cannot. In order to lead a good life, you shouldn't spend energy on the things you have no control over. I've had a couple real bad stretches, but when things turn pear shaped, I take account of the things I have control over and what I don't.
I talk about it to friends and family. Most things have happened to people you already know.
Antidepressants and industrial-strength denial.
Basically, do what you can, don't do what you can't. Shit happens, however you want to rationalize it, it still happens.
I go to the orange and black website and forget about everything
😂 thank you for the laugh today kind human.
I don't remember where I originally heard this from, but the Serenity Prayer has helped me get through some tough times
"Oh God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what can not be helped, and insight to know the one from the other"
I know it begins with "God", but I found it applicable to my life without requesting anything from God.
Be realistic - whatever it is, it will pass. It's not necessary to understand why something has happened to accept that it has happened. If you can understand it, great, but quite a lot of things in life aren't dependent on things you do or don't do and trying to understand those things will drive you mad.
Bad things happen but so do good things. Kipling wrote:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
Meaning, exceptionally good things and exceptionally bad things are comparatively rare and looking for reasons can sometimes be an exercise in futility. A bird didn't decide to pose as an agent of evil and target you to take a shit on, all that happened was a bird dropped a load when you happened to be walking there.
In the meantime, do things you enjoy. Go to the pub with your mates, re-read a comforting book, listen to music - whatever. And once it's passed - because it will - exert control over the things you can control that will make you happy.
acceptance. hiding my problems behind made up deities will only make things worse when I have to confront them.
If I'm still breathing, I'm fine.
I try to balance by adding joy to my life and others around me. Loving people, laughing, and a sense of humor about myself helps. Life has a random element. I also try to concentrate attention on the good and what I can control. I have an insatiable curiosity about everything, that keeps me busy, in the meantime.
We all have a limited time in this life, and at some point in the next two hundred years, are certain to recycle our atoms to nature.
I rely on the bonds I've built with other people
I call one of my friends and talk to them
Said the rich man to the poor man, and the poor man to the rich; "this too shall pass"
This will be over soon.
I tend to hyperfocus on things I can control and/or try to learn a new skill. Both are distractions, but you can't control what you can't control. Obsessing over those things leads to dark places. Sometimes, mental judo helps. You can reframe a situation that seems terrible by looking at it from another context. Unfortunately, it's hard to give examples for this.
You're the one in control of whether things go down or up the hill in your life, not some mystical entity. If shit goes downhill, you just have to deal with it, praying to the gods won't fix your life or make you money, only you can do that... Nothing more to it, really.
That's how I think about it, anyways...
Constantly contemplate suicide until the idea of suicide is boring