Why do you live? What for? | Page 2 | INFJ Forum

Why do you live? What for?

I like this about you, you have the courage to confront brutal reality.

I believe Camus (an existentialist) specifically addresses your very thoughts, and suggests the alternative to suicide is enjoying the temporary exhilaration from your toil. (e.g. myth of Sisyphus)

Although, to my friends who read Camus, and other existentialists, I also recommend this, C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory. Definitely a classic. Lewis has had a great influence on me.
 
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The problem is that in essence, everything is irrelevant. Unimportant. No matter what you do, no matter how you live your life, ultimately you will die. Everything ceases. Energy is the only constant and though we are a physical manifestation of energy, when that energy leaves the body you are left with nothing, you are nothing. A chunk of rotting meat six feet under the earth your once loved ones tread upon. Things change, cells break down, no matter what you do or who you are there is no denying that the world we live in is pointless.

I don't know what I live for? the goal of not causing my mother vast amounts of emotional pain by killing myself.
Unfortunately I struggle with nihilistic tendencies as well.
 
One thing about suicide is that it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I respect you a lot because you say exactly what you think without sugar coating anything. Is there any history of depression or suicide in your family on either side? I had to get to the point where I recognized that the way I was thinking and my attitude didn't work anymore. I had to find a new way to look at things, and this takes outside professional help. You are very intelligent, but that isn't enough to figure this stuff out. Mine was all about mispreception.
 
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Melkor said:
I suppose this is a question I desperately need an answer to, yet never fully understood.

Oh I respect the lives of others, and their right to it, but I respect equally my right to disregard and if so inclined, end my own life.

I once lived for love, twice for the well-being of others, and the effect nearly killed me.
Mere musings.

I want answers, what do you live for?

Please don't hesitate to be blunt. I need no sugar coating, I've tried suicide once, and I'd do it again.

It's funny, in a bitter way.
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I've thought about punching my own ticket a few times, but it just didn't sit right with me after enough consideration. For one its just too damn easy and I couldn't stand for all the terrible sadness that it would bring to my family and friends. I guess for the most part I'm too stubborn and a little too lucky to die yet, likely there are still things I'm sposed to do.

Some days are better than others, life can be tough...but I make do with what I got. I guess for the most part I live for the good times and soldier through the bad times.
 
April (May), you nailed that one! Part of happiness for me is knowing that not only am I where I feel I ought to be, but wanting to be there. I don't think I can live without harmonious relationships, and as you say, forgiving others for their indiscretions. Our own indiscretions are right around the corner, large or small. How can we expect to be forgiven if we don't forgive?
 
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I live because I have no choice. I think there is a fair probability that the Buddhists et al. are right and we keep being reborn until we become enlightened. And every once in a while I get the slightest glimpse of that enlightenment and that makes it all worth it.
 
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Melkor said:
I suppose this is a question I desperately need an answer to, yet never fully understood.

...

I want answers, what do you live for?
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I've been trying to find a satisfactory answer to this question for a while now.

The short answer is that I live for happiness. But I'm coming to realize I need an additional reason. I'm an atheist, so I'm not going to find any ready answers that involve religion/spirituality.


You wanted honesty, so there you go. The answer is that I don't know.
 
Thanks Jack, I've always loved Lewis, not least because we share the same city of birth:p

Ugh...

I think my situation has worsened.

Or improved?

I've lost my self-spite, lost my sadness and hopelessness.

I no longer question why I am here.

No.

I now ask ' Am I indeed here at all?'

I find the idea of not being real so very comforting, laugh if you will...
 
Well, this is an interesting thread.

I live for the deep, the profound, and the mystical. I live for intense experiences, good and bad, and to understand people, especially myself.

I used to be rather nihilistic, and I wish I could tell you why that fell away, but I now believe that all meaning comes from our own selves, which is why it's pointless to seek objective meaning.

The biggest mistake I've ever made was to focus on objective reality. There's no meaning out there.
 
KazeCraven said:
The biggest mistake I've ever made was to focus on objective reality. There's no meaning out there.
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Can't stress this enough.

After my eyes opened up to this, a lot of my existential depression just disappeared.
 
To forget is not to escape.
 
KazeCraven said:
I used to be rather nihilistic, and I wish I could tell you why that fell away, but I now believe that all meaning comes from our own selves, which is why it's pointless to seek objective meaning.

The biggest mistake I've ever made was to focus on objective reality. There's no meaning out there.
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if there's no meaning in objective reality there's no meaning anywhere, IMO. "finding" meaning in subjective reality seems like such a cop out
 
April said:
if there's no meaning in objective reality there's no meaning anywhere, IMO. "finding" meaning in subjective reality seems like such a cop out
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[MENTION=1926]April[/MENTION], I think you misunderstand me. I don't find meaning in subjective reality either. I create it. It does not exist independent of me; that's the reason why I say not to focus just on objective reality. Does a movie have meaning if there's no viewer to make it? What exactly is objective meaning anyway? How can we discover it?

Also, I would think subjective reality contains objective reality, not the other way around. There's the shared, objective reality, then there's interpretations and perspectives on top of that which is where meaning comes from.
 
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I live because I was born and it would be a shame to die of my own hand. I haven't put very much thought into the reason for my existence or whether or not my life serves some greater purpose. I'd like to think that my life has some value, but I don't know to who exactly. I don't know who tallies up value and decides what we're worth. I don't know whether or not someone out there is deciding upon our purpose. Probably not.

But I like to make the best out of my life. I don't like to think deeply on the nature or my own reality. I feel like a lot of what we all do on a day to day basis is totally pointless. I am just making it my own personal goal to figure out what is true about myself and what's going to make this life worth living. I don't bother with the rest.
 
KazeCraven said:
@April, I think you misunderstand me. I don't find meaning in subjective reality either. I create it. It does not exist independent of me; that's the reason why I say not to focus just on objective reality.
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meaning that exists only within your own head, that you've fabricated for your own purposes and that isn't real to anyone but you just seems like intentional delusion. it's just my opinion of course, but i don't really understand how that could be valuable.

Does a movie have meaning if there's no viewer to make it? What exactly is objective meaning anyway? How can we discover it?
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the movie would have meaning, but you'd need a viewer to perceive it. the objective meaning would be inherent in the script, and portrayed by the actors and implemented by the stylistic choices of the director and crew. it wouldn't be created by the viewer, the viewer would discover it, but i guess since it couldn't be discovered without a viewer, in some real ways, it doesn't exist outside of him. lol, kinda reminds me of that saying "does a tree falling in the forest make a noise if no one's around to hear it" i think it does, in certain fundamental ways.


Also, I would think subjective reality contains objective reality, not the other way around. There's the shared, objective reality, then there's interpretations and perspectives on top of that which is where meaning comes from.
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how would you know for sure? definitely they are intimately linked, and perhaps it's impossible to know what anything 'means' objectively vs. what you've personally decided matters based on your own subjective preferences.. i sort of give greater weight to the shared, objective reality though, since that's a constant (or it should be), and whatever we're interpreting subjectively is far more dynamic and unreliable.
(i hope that makes a little sense, lol.)
 
April said:
the movie would have meaning, but you'd need a viewer to perceive it. the objective meaning would be inherent in the script, and portrayed by the actors and implemented by the stylistic choices of the director and crew. it wouldn't be created by the viewer, the viewer would discover it, but i guess since it couldn't be discovered without a viewer, in some real ways, it doesn't exist outside of him. lol, kinda reminds me of that saying "does a tree falling in the forest make a noise if no one's around to hear it" i think it does, in certain fundamental ways.
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When you say it's inherent in the script, I think one of two things: either it's determined because it has a generally regarded as correct interpretation or it actually exists in some measurable form. In the latter case, I think this is unlikely because you can ignore this 'objective meaning' as if it doesn't exist and you wouldn't be acting against the laws of reality. Suppose there was objective meaning. How would we come to know it anyway? The only valid method of knowing anything that I know of is through using reason to make sense of our sensory experience. If there is, in fact, objective meaning out there you can't really know about it without a leap of faith anyway, so it's no better than believing in the meaning you've concocted in your own head. In fact, I would argue that the latter makes more sense because in the former you're basically assuming something does exist without having any way of knowing it did in the first place.

In the former, you can say it's supposed to mean something, and the creator probably intended for it to mean something by using the human patterns of experience (all I mean here is details that mean something due to the patterns we experience by perceiving reality) but then we're just saying that it's a collective subjective meaning that we've all agreed on. I suppose my point is that I can live as if the world is a place devoid of meaning and I'm not actually denying any tangible aspect of reality. Just because many people agree with it doesn't make it exist objectively; it just so happens to resonate with the general human experience.


how would you know for sure? definitely they are intimately linked, and perhaps it's impossible to know what anything 'means' objectively vs. what you've personally decided matters based on your own subjective preferences.. i sort of give greater weight to the shared, objective reality though, since that's a constant (or it should be), and whatever we're interpreting subjectively is far more dynamic and unreliable.
(i hope that makes a little sense, lol.)
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I think I see what you're getting at. It sounds like you're saying that I should have reasons for thinking that something means something that others can acknowledge as true. In other words, it's objective in the sense that my interpretation or my source of meaning can be understood by others. Hmmm... am I on the right track here or am I just making something up?
 
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I've actually though a lot about this. In the end I came up with this:

I live to find meaning in life.
 
I feel dark. Not the comforting sort. Not the warm, blissful dark that you can crawl into and sleep amongst. Just fear, self loathing and worry.
Why am I so afraid of people? Why am I moved to panic, and physical illness when I try to join a club? I feel exhausted and I barely moved. Something I wanted to do, I tried. But I didn't even get into the room.
I feel so disgusted with myself, I had to rant about it.
 
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