It’s one of those days again…
Are you feeling down? Nothing makes sense?
There are those who’d tell you to smarten up, who’d tell you that less fortunate people than you are making more of themselves and that you should stop yammering. I don’t agree with those people.
I don’t think that approach works, since our experience is so subjective. You might live in the most privileged of situations and still have every reason to be depressed. We are after all extremely adaptive creatures, and thus adapt frighteningly quickly to luxury and a high standard of living.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
— Viktor Emil Frankl“He who has a why to live for can deal with almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
This quote by Nietzsche goes both ways though – He who has no why can deal with almost nothing. Lack of meaning and meaninglessness are probably the most common and most debilitating afflictions in the affluent West today. In many ways, meaninglessness is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, in some cases leading to existential emptiness and desperation independent of the physical circumstances.
According to Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs, our first needs are to nourishment & safety followed by intimacy. Therefore, as long as people are struggling to survive & to to find basic safety they have little leisure to suffer from meaninglessness – in a way survival becomes their meaning. It is mainly in the more affluent regions where satisfaction of many of the basic needs is taken for granted that the search for meaning and lack thereof can become debilitating.
For all these reasons, you have every right to feel the way you do. No matter what your circumstances, within your experience feeling down and despaired makes perfect sense, and it is your good right to stay in this state.
Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered; it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.
- Osho
Far be it for me to take the stance of those people who tell you to “smarten up”.
For one thing I would like to point out to you that your desperation very likely does not lie in the outer circumstances, but rather in your lack of meaning.
For another I would like to encourage you – difficult as it may be in your current state – to raise your awareness of all the things you take for granted, to become aware of the hundreds and thousands of limitations you’re setting yourself, and to consider taking life into your own hands.
Big words, from some blog stranger, I know, but if you allow yourself to give it a go… It may even help you ;)
Please be aware that our need for congruence is incredibly strong. Our cognitive dissonance says “I would never choose to be miserable, therefore it can’t be a choice. If it was as easy as that I would have long done it.”. I am catching even myself at being resistant to the list below, feeling that someone is trying get one over me. But really, this list is only meant as a reflection tool, to facilitate gratitude for the things we often take for granted and to take all these gifts as a nudge to go out and live our dreams.
Please tick all of the boxes that apply to you.
You …
Physiological
| have no air to breathe | |
| have no access to drinkable water | |
| can get no sleep | |
| have no food | |
| have no warmth | |
| have no shelter | |
| have no clothes | |
| are in physical pain | |
| are missing limbs, paralyzed | |
| are blind | |
| are deaf | |
| are mute |
Safety
| are imprisoned, enslaved, in servitude | |
| are in imminent danger to your body (war, natural disaster, …) | |
| have a terminal illness | |
| have no medical insurance | |
| live in an autocracy, civil war | |
| have no access to a justice system | |
| are discriminated by race, color, sex, language, religion, origin |
Human rights
| have no freedom of speech, freedom of communication | |
| have no right to a fair trial | |
| have no freedom of religion | |
| have no right to vote | |
| have no freedom of movement | |
| have no freedom of assembly | |
| have no free choice of employment | |
| have no school education |
Love/belonging
| have no friends, acquaintances, colleagues | |
| have no family |
If you’ve made it to the end, congratulations. Many of your fellow readers bailed out earlier because they didn’t want to be confronted with all the things they might choose to be grateful for. They wanted to wallow in their (in the grand scheme of things) “little” problems instead of facing the many privileges many of them have.
Again, I am not attempting to invalidate your feelings, nor am I saying that it’s your fault for having them. All I want to suggest is that there are other ways of seeing the world, other perspectives to take, and to encourage you to think about what you want in life – even at this difficult time – rather than spending time brooding over how it is treating you unfairly.
It’s is entirely up to you which way you decide and neither is better than the other. I invite you to contemplate your options and to choose which one seems more tempting ;)
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awareness, being, choice, cognitive dissonance, congruence, desperation, dream, emptiness, experience, gratitude, lack, meaning, perspective
