Giving meaning to life?

[ajeh1234]

Hello I just have a question for people here.

 

Does your life feel pointless? You see I have a problem.

 

My life has no meaning. I never realized it till I got bored at my last job and decided to quit and take some time off, my life at the time was unfulfilling and boring, I did nothing, and tried everything. But just in the last couple days I realized why I'm like this. I can't think of any reason for living, I'm not suicidal the thought of killing myself doesn't seem right. However I haven't done anything important in my life, I haven't got much going for me right now, and I can't see anything worth doing in the future.

 

Has anyone else ever felt like this? Like your just empty on the inside? I can't place my finger on what the problem could be, I mean I worked hard and tried to fill my life with material posessions, and tried to learn more, but life just has no flavour to it. The thing is I'm only 20, almost 21, and life just seems pointless.

 

Well actually that last bit was a bit of a lie, I think I know a possible cause for how I feel, since my parents got a divorce when I was 12 I sort of forsook god and religion, I mean it makes sense, religion just never appealed to me even when I was younger. But could it have something to do with burying emotions, I never did much of anything after my parents got a divorce, it just never phased me, and I've buried every emotion since that time and maybe it just got a bit too full?

 

I hope noone else has ever felt like this, it's hard to breathe there's basically a great burden on my chest but I don't know what it is, or what caused it. I just want to get back to my life and enjoying it again. Does this sound liek depression? I don't think I'm depressed, I mean suicide is a part of that isn't it? And I have no particular desire to do that.

[glitter_bug]

yes, this does sound like depression to me - you don't have to be suicidal and crying and distrought. More often depression takes the form of apathy - totally not caring what happens or where you life is going.

 

 

Maybe you could try to get more involved in life. Becoming a volunteer at a hospital to read to sick children really helped me put things in perspective. You could help out at a soup kitchen or at an animal shelter. If you feel like you are doing something useful, it might make your life seem to have purpose.

 

 

Also take a look at your career - is it really what you want to do? you are young and still have a chance to turn it around into a field that you might find more interesting. Maybe you should consider taking a short course or even going to college.

 

 

Best of luck. As cliche as it sounds - you only get out of life what you put in. You only have one life - make it a good one

[shamen]

I agree, IMHO you sound a little depressed to me too. I've been feeling a lot of the same apathy that you have recently. I go through periods of it in my life. When I feel like that, I go to see a therapist. It's a place where you can talk about what's going on and they ask you some good questions to make you think about what you're doing (if you get a good one).

 

My parents divorced as well and I sort of gave up on the secular god too. I am a deist now, someone who believes that something else exists, but I'm not sure what it is. I don't practice anything religiously either (except going into the woods).

 

Are you working again? (If you are, therapy is usually covered by insurance.) I had a friend who took some time off a while back and he ended up not working for a year, way too long, and it just made his depression worse.

 

To enjoy life, you have to live in it. Live in the moment, as well as make plans and have goals for the future. What are you doing to really live your life now? Do you have plans for the future?

 

Write in a journal, be with your friends, do the activities that you love. Material possessions aren't really going to make you happy. It's the other things that we have that fulfill us. Love, beauty of the world. And it doesn't have to be love of another person in a relationship; love of friends and family can be (and is) just as important.

 

Things can and will get better, but you've got to be active in the process.

[Tony]

Life is never boring. If it is, it's the responsibility of the person who is experiencing it as such. We are individually the architects of our own lives and how interesting and exciting they are (or how mundane and boring). Noted psychiatrist Victor Frankl wrote that the meaning of life was basically experential, that is, how we proceed through life and what we do with the experiences we have. If you do boring things, you will be bored. As long as you put yourself in the way of things that are exciting or meaningful to you, you will get out of life what you want.

 

In and of itself, life has no meaning. It's merely a gift to which you assign the meaning. What better gift to receive than something we can make into anything we want.

 

If you happen to be disabled, our creator gave us vivid imaginations where we can do anything or go anywhere we want. The greatest accomplishments of mankind began as wild conceptions of the mind. If you have anykind of brain at all, you can never be bored. And if you don't have a brain, follow the yellow brick road.

[ajeh1234]

Thanks for the replies I didn't exaclty word my first post that well and apologize.

 

Basically I have tried everything though, I played sports, played video games, volunteered(at a sporting event), worked lots of over time, read books, gone for walks, gone to the gym. I have in my mind tried everything it just seems that life has lost it's zest, everything feels boring, I don't really care to eat much either, as like most other things it isn't what it used to be, I used to love steak, now it's just food that takes too long to eat, but I have nothing better to do with my time.

 

Then there is the confidence factor, I don't have the confidence in myself that I had when I was 18-19. Even if it is something that I am positive that I know and I have tons of experience with it, I will double, triple, quadruple check everything to make sure it's right. But I don't care too much about what I look like or how my place looks, I just am a perfectionist in some ways and not others. And I have a problem with focussing. I used to be able to pay attention to everything, now I hate driving as I can become bored easily and just not pay attention to anything. But like I said, I wasn't like this until recently, atleast I don't think I was.

 

Anyhow does anyone that has gone through something similar have any solutions that worked for them? I suppose I could go find some worthwhile volunteer work, or perhaps I could start a journal. The thing is I don't believe any simple thing like that would help me as nothing simple has done it before for me.

 

And to answer the question about if I'm working or not, I'm not. Basically I see jobs that I know I could get, but I shoot myself in the foot before I even think about it on the grounds that there is someone else better qualified for the job, or someone that could do it better. At my old job there was alot of good people, but I left as I couldn't handle the emptiness of it. I know that I have to find a career and stick with it, but I'd like to believe that a job doing something that I really enjoy is more important, and any job I've ever done so far has been like that.

Thanks for the help.

[moimeme]

You do sound depressed. You've lost interest in things you used to enjoy, lost concentration and memory. You need to go to your doctor and talk to him about the way you're feeling. If eating better and exercising and getting involved with others doesn't help you, you may need meds to kick your brain chemicals back into functioning correctly.

[shamen]

I think that maybe getting a job is the first place to start. Anything, just to get you out of the house. Are you spending too much time inside worrying about things? At first it will seem a little pointless, but it's something else to focus on besides what you are going through right now. Then, when you are ready and you're making some money, you can do the job search for your career while you have a job to find something that you really care about.

 

If, however, money is not an issue, maybe the volunteer thing and journal writing will help. Have you tried a career counselor? Did you go to college? If you haven't, why don't you consider it? I went back to school (grad school) when I knew that I needed a change in my life.

 

Are you hanging out with your friends? Talking to them about what's going on? Seeing a therapist?

 

In your 2nd paragraph, you state, that you "played, volunteered, worked, read, and gone." Somehow that implies that you are no longer doing any of these things. You didn't say, "I have been volunteering, reading, going, etc." So, if you aren't still doing things to keep yourself active, it's a little stifling.

 

When you first try to get yourself out of a funk, things will continue to seem a little pointless and futile when you're bumming. But, over time, they will reconnect with the meaning that they once had.

 

I've been pretty depressed the last couple of years due to a bad relationship that I was stuck in and I've been doing all I can to get myself out of this. Doing things that I know will make me feel better: seeing a therapist, going to the gym, hanging out with my friends (sometimes even when I don't feel like leaving the house), reading, camping, skiing, playing pool. Reconnecting with things that I have loved in the past. I know that it's going to take some time, but I'm slowly, ever so slowly, starting to feel more like me again.

 

I'm never going to feel like the person that I was when I was 18-19. I would never want to; I've learned too much. You've been learning a lot in the last couple of years and experiencing life, would you really want to go back to that?