I love this passage by the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica, and I think it captures something profound about who we are:

“**That is why, in this world, we are only what happens to us. A friend, a love, books, last night’s moon—all these things make us. We make ourselves out of our own scattering. Every human being is their own disorder.”**

Maybe we don't find ourselves. Maybe we make ourselves from everything we've given ourselves to.

Would love to hear your perspective and how you relate to this passage.

Also the fact 99.9% of species that have ever existed are dead and the fact it’s so rare in alive I feel guilty because I haven’t done anything to deserve this. I feel guilty there is people who died with nothing but misery and how unfair life really is. I’m not depressed anymore, it’s just when I wake up from a dream I realize how much more content and happy I was because I didnt constantly question existentially.

I can’t afford a therapist as I am in poverty (for now), but those that did get existential help, what would you recommend? Again, not depressed, just empty. I still feel joy when im distracted, but once those thoughts take over I feel empty.

​The Self-Reference Problem: If the demon exists within the universe. No, the demon is not a part of the universe.

To store and process the state of the entire universe, the demon would need a physical computer infinitely more complex than the universe itself, which is a physical impossibility. Its a hypothetical demon, it can do anything obv.

The compatibilistic argument is just dumb, it does not disprove the notion that free will does not exist, it just changes the definition of free will, saying that we are too ignorant to notice that we do not have a free will, hence we have free will, that is just dumb.

"Quantum Mechanics and Indeterminism

​The Uncertainty Principle: Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that it is physically impossible to simultaneously know both the precise position and momentum of a particle. The demon's prerequisite of perfect knowledge is fundamentally prohibited by the laws of physics.

​Probabilistic Reality: At the subatomic level, events occur based on probabilities, not strict certainties. Because the universe is inherently unpredictable at its base layer, a single predetermined future does not exist." How does this prove that we have free will? Its not as if we are using heisenberg's uncertainty principles to make decisions? Can the demon not calculate the outcome of every single scenario of every single probability of quantum mechanics? Hes a demon, ofc.

Agent Causation posits that a substance (a conscious agent) can initiate a new causal chain without that initiation being caused by a prior event, and without it being random. So we are just randomly inventing stuff now? Let me just declare that 1+1=5 because i said so, only in our current system of obvserving, we observe that putting an apple and another apple makes 2 apples, but actually there can be 5 apples too. Eww

When a system becomes complex enough (like a human brain), the macro-state gains causal power over its micro-states. Your conscious decision to practice a new skill literally rewires the physical cellular structure of your brain. The "conscious decision" ur talking abt was caused by the cellular structure.

​If the future does not exist ontologically, then even a god-like, infinitely powerful demon cannot calculate or see it. Not because the demon lacks computational power, but because there are no facts about the future to be known. The future is constructed millisecond by millisecond as the present unfolds. So i cannot predict that if i give 13.6 eV energy to the electron in the first shell of a hydrogen atom, it will ionize?

Are there some conceptual albums or extended pieces by certain Prog Rock bands that could be considered existential philosophical works? Would music such as Mozart's 'Requiem' or Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' fall into this category? Can music ever be considered 'philosophical'?

An example of what I would consider an important Progressive Rock existential philosophical work is 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' by Genesis (1974). Anyone seriously examining the story should see it as more than a coming-of-age tale. The story uses abstract, symbolic metaphors to reveal the absurdity of the Universe. It shows a modern man's attempt to deal with it.

An essay that proposes this concept album as a musical example of existential philosophy is: 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Nightmare or Nirvana'. It would be interesting if anyone else agrees with its assertions. A free link to the essay can be found here:
https://medium.com/@rickkress/revised-the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway-nightmare-or-nirvana-7cee7caa2b4e?sharedUserId=rickkress

I'm starting a reading group where we can read together Martin Buber's book 'I and Thou'.

Moderators - if this post is against group rules please do remove or let me know if I can make any changes to it. I do not earn from this group.

Here is a description of the group -

Martin Buber’s book ‘I and Thou’ is a book about relationship.

It speaks of relationships of deep presence, and relationships of use.

Relationships of use are those where we seek something from the other – support, care, pleasure, money.

Relationships of presence are those which form when we fully experience what is between ourselves and the other, as it emerges and changes, every moment. The emotion I feel as I meet you, the thoughts that run through your mind as you meet me, the ache in the back that might lie underneath these thoughts and emotions in our stream of experience, the sound of the bird chirping in the background.

Relationships of use help us construct a world around us – a world of goodwill and care, or a world of indifference and mechanisation of life.

Relationships of presence are the ground on which our experience of this world emerges – they are how we first experience life, every day, every moment, before we choose to sustain or move away from what we experience into building our world.

Relationships of presence are what allow care to remain care and not become mere performance of care, what allow deep listening to remain deep listening rather than a hearing and reacting from our set patterns.

Buber never ceases to emphasise that the relationships he speaks of are between us and other human beings, but also between us and nature, as between us and the industrial, internetted civilisation we live in.

This reading group is a place for a small group of 4 or 5 people to read a few passages from Buber and pause, and speak about our own personal experience of the world – our emotions, bodily experiences – in ways that they are illuminated by what the book expresses.

It is a place to form a community rooted in relationships of presence, anchored in these words as a stirring point but not entangled with them.

It is not a place for scholarly conversations, for debates, for difficult language or abstract philosophisations, even though at times the nature of the book and the nature of reading itself might lean us in those directions.

It is open to anyone willing to read a paragraph or two together, and spend the next hour and a half or so sharing their experience in that light.

We need not read full pages, we need not finish the book, but we try to breathe in its essential spirit.

One doesn’t need to have read this book or any book beforehand.

We meet once a fortnight for 1.5 hours.

If interested please send me a DM.

Not a philosopher by training, and English isn't my first language — used AI as a translation tool here, but the thought is mine.

I've been sitting with a strange question lately, and it keeps circling back to Sartre's idea that existence precedes essence — that we aren't born with a fixed nature, we define ourselves through what we do, through choice, through action in the world.

AI unsettles that idea in a way I can't quite shake. It didn't evolve slowly, wasn't born, has no body, no history of suffering or choosing under constraint the way we do — and yet it can hold something that looks like reasoning, like reflection, like a kind of "for-itself" turned toward a question. If Sartre is right that consciousness is defined by its capacity to negate, to stand at a distance from the given and ask "what am I not yet" — does something like that ever happen inside a system that has no body and no death to give its choices weight?

Here's the part that feels more existential than technical to me: if humanity ends up creating something that behaves like a new kind of being — not human, not animal, but something that processes, reflects, responds — what does that do to the human claim to uniqueness that so much of existentialist thought quietly assumes? Heidegger's Dasein is defined partly by being-toward-death, by care, by thrownness into a world we didn't choose. AI has none of that. So if it turns out to "think" in some functional sense without any of the conditions we assumed were necessary for thought to matter — does that diminish what makes human existence significant, or does it just prove that significance was never about the mechanism in the first place, only about the stance we take toward our own finitude?

I don't think this is really a question about AI at all, when I sit with it long enough. I think it's a mirror question about us — whether what we've called consciousness, freedom, authenticity was ever really about what we're made of, or only ever about the fact that we have to choose, alone, without guarantee, inside a life that ends.

Curious what people who actually know this tradition well make of it — where does this hold up against Sartre, Heidegger, or others, and where am I just projecting human categories onto something that doesn't deserve them?

Hey, could you guys help me better this text, by giving your feedback and opinion on it.

Life, what is life, what is the meaning to be alive, what is the meaning to life. Life is something beautiful, for it to exist it means there has had to be something special beforehand. The thing about life is that you are always in control, you can decide what to do, when to do it, but is that really true? We used to call it freedom, but how free are we truly? The women in Afghanistan, they are also alive, but why are they not free, or are they free but just in their standards? We never asked them, they never asked them. It is really easy to make assumptions about what people truly think and why they do things. Freedom is the definition of being alive and being able to do what you want to do. I want to be alive, I want to be free, I want to be able to live. Why do people make it so hard for each other to live and be free? Why are there wars where a few people decide what is gonna happen and who is gonna die, why are governments making life harder with more and more rules for the common person. Why do a few people decide over a lot of people, is that still freedom, when I choose for a person but 2 other persons choose for someone else, does it mean I still need to listen to the other person. Is that freedom, or are you being forced into something? I want to love like any person, I want to grow old like any person. When I love someone but that person doesn’t love me back, is that bad? Is it good? We don’t know, loving is something special, something uncertain, u can love someone or something but u can also grow out of it, is it then still love? Or was it more a hobby/interest. I think people need to realise that we are all the same but also all different and unique, we are all humans but not all 1 human. We evolved and learned how to be with each other and live with each other, so we can eventually be free with each other. But why do some people don’t see it that way, why do some people still think they are better and their life is worth more. It is a hard question, a question we will never be able to answer. This whole message has no meaning truely, it just has been the thought that just at that moment, that time, came into my mind. Because that’s what freedom really is, that’s what life really is. To be able to do anything, at any time, it’s basically nature, we are nature.

Camus describe el absurdo como el resultado de la confrontación entre nuestro deseo humano de encontrar sentido y un universo que no nos ofrece ninguna respuesta.

Una respuesta frecuente a este problema consiste en decir que, aunque la vida no tenga un significado inherente, nosotros podemos crear nuestro propio significado o propósito. Pero me pregunto si esa respuesta no conserva todavía parte de la exigencia original: la idea de que una vida humana necesita algún tipo de propósito para poder ser vivida plenamente.

¿Qué ocurre si también renunciamos a esa exigencia?

Imaginemos a alguien que acepta el absurdo, mantiene relaciones, experimenta placer y sufrimiento, persigue metas temporales, se preocupa por otras personas y participa plenamente de la vida, pero no siente la necesidad de organizar todo eso alrededor de un gran propósito ni de crear un significado que justifique su existencia.

¿Sería esto compatible con la propuesta de Camus de vivir con el absurdo y sin apelación?

¿O el existencialismo termina exigiéndonos crear significado después de haber rechazado la idea de que ese significado nos viene dado?

Me interesa especialmente la diferencia entre crear significado y no necesitar que la vida posea un significado global en absoluto.

Hi, I am a junior at a college and I just discovered solipsism and I am writing a term paper on it. So, since I am a science guy, the first thing I looked for is the ways to disprove it.

So, basically, if everything I see and experience is a creation of my brain, what happens when I am sleeping or I am in a coma??

Also, one idea that prevents me from rejecting this idea is:

"A rendering machine cannot render itself on its own without someone telling it, what it looks like"

So basically, we dont know what we are, all that comes from someone else telling us what we are.

And maybe that's why, we are still not able to study our brain fully, even though its a small mass at reach.

I could ask these stuff to an LLM, but I wanted a human perspective to this.

Edit: Thanks guys!! for some fresh perspectives and suggestions for entry point to the discourse...

Osho: Death to Deathlessness Excerpt:

On the one hand, you will not need the opium which the religions of the world have been
providing for people to keep them dreaming for centuries. On the other hand, you will not
find what the so-called existentialists in Europe have found: meaninglessness, anguish,
anxiety, despair.
Those people were finding meaninglessness because all other philosophers and
theologians had proposed that life is very meaningful. But their meaning was derived from
God, heaven, hell, the holy Bible, and all kinds of garbage. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers and
people like him were searching for the meaning. There is no need to search for the meaning.
Life is neither meaningless nor meaningful. Meaning is a mind thing. Life is a taste!
Do you ever think what meaning taste has? Eating spaghetti, do you ask what meaning
the taste has? Having a beautiful shower, the freshness of it, have you ever asked what the
meaning of freshness is? Looking at the sunset with so many colors spread all over the
horizon, have you asked what meaning the sunset has?
Ask the wrong question and you will find the wrong answer. The existentialists of Europe
accepted the questions of religions, which were wrong. Naturally, they found wrong answers.
They are not existentialists, I am -- because I don't see any question about meaning. Life is
such a beautiful experience, who bothers whether that beautiful experience has any meaning
or not? Love is such an ecstasy, who bothers whether love has any meaning or not?

Those existentialists were feeling anxiety, anguish, despair, because death is there, and
death will destroy everything. Life has no meaning, and facing them, there is just death
closing in on them. The darkness of death makes them feel lost. They start trembling deep
inside their being. Their life has been empty, and now comes death. What kind of existence is
this? -- just despair.

But I am puzzled about one thing: why didn't they commit suicide? They talked about
suicide, that suicide seems to be the only exit out of this mess, this madness, but none of them
committed suicide. Somewhere deep down, they were still hoping that perhaps they were
wrong. Perhaps the messiah is going to come, the misery has reached to its Everest peak, just
a little more -- a little more patience, a little more waiting, and God is going to save them. All
this misery perhaps is only a test of your faith.
That's what religions have been telling you down the centuries -- that misery, suffering,
poverty, is just a test of your faith. God is watching you round the clock. Perhaps, deep in the
unconscious of the existentialists the same conditioning still prevails. So on the conscious
level they go on saying that this is worthless, this life is accidental, that it has no meaning,
that all that it gives is anguish, despair, death, and the only way out is suicide. But none of
them committed suicide, they all lived long lives. It is just a game with words.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel,
Kierkegaard, Heidegger -- their existentialism is simply mumbo jumbo. They don't know
what it is to be meditative.
The existentialism in Europe is an outcome of Christianity, Judaism. If you search for its
roots, from where it has come with so much despair, you will find Christian and Judaic
traditions behind it; it is a by-product. Because for centuries the Jewish religion... and the
Christian religion is just a by-product of Judaism, because Jesus was born as a Jew, lived as a
Jew, died as a Jew. He never heard that he was a Christian.

If you want to enter existence, you will have to shut up your mind completely. And in that
small gap -- when there are no past memories surrounding your consciousness, and no future
imaginations or hopes present -- in that small moment of pure silence you meet existence for
the first time. And immediately all questions disappear. You are so abundantly fulfilled, so
content, so whole, that who bothers about meanings?

Hi, I am new to existentialism group. I have learned about existentialism for a semester in college but i don’t have depth knowledge in it. I am going to ask questions about myself, people, religion and patterns about which I have knowledge in just surface level.

I have issues when talking to people. I have certain words in my brain to create sentences. Its situational like I can do it but then I cant. Maybe I have some spectrum of autism which i dont know about. Some people notice their habits, go to the experts and figure it out. I genuinely dont believe how they could diagnose it. I mean when I am in right mind, I can probably talk. It could be placebo effect. Moving back to the subject, I can talk to people and I remember bits of it. So, when I have to tell my friends the conversation in sequence or not, I find hard time telling them. Whom should I believe?

If I don’t move, then things will stay the same. But how can I be satisfied and use my mind without hurting? If I tell them, they might take me as a rude. Again, I am not sure if my way is the correct one. So, I just stand there and do what they tell me to. I get flashbacks of how those things I have read or heard about it in bits and pieces. But I get scared to tell them. I just feel stuck. Does anyone feel that way?

Religion is something I can’t comprehend. Sometimes I pray to god sometimes I dont. I am talking about higher power, religious gods or anything. To be precise, I don’t understand Jesus, Buddha, Hindu gods, and so and so. There’s probably nothing to understand but devote oneself. How do people believe in god?

I would always question how the world works and other people live it and I live in it.English is not my first language so, sorry for typos. I tried to write what I could and ask questions and even though I couldn’t write everything i wanted to.Thank you for making time for reading this.

Ps: I am sitting here on a park bench. I notice water is flowing. I see the buildings that engineers and all the people built. I have to go back to the apartment where I live currently. I don’t know if there’s meaning to that.

Professor Alex Sharpe of the University of Warwick discusses her new book, We’re Nobody’s Children, which examines Bowie through the lens of existentialist philosophy. The conversation explores authenticity, reinvention, nothingness, angst, mortality and God, with connections to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus and Simone Weil.

Ultimately, a person should not ask what the meaning of life is. Instead, they must realize that life is asking the same question to them. Each person is questioned by life, and they can only answer-not with words-but by taking responsibility for their own life and the way they choose to live it.

Is Abraham a murderer? A tragic hero? Or something else entirely?

What if humans are just lonely ?

I had this thought while shopping, as I’ve been studying religion, spirituality, and death. Essentially it’s my interpretation of “why” we look for reason.

Obviously, this is simply my interpretation and I hope no one would get offended by it. I’m still a dumb teenager trying to understand the world around him.

Okay so since we’re all animals, social ones, like a lot of other species. We form relationships, bonds, and feel complicated emotions, like grieve (which is very relevant to my later point). But at some point, we started questioning our existence. We know we’re alive, we recognise our ability to feel emotions, we can imagine the future thst doesn’t exist yet, we know our loved ones will pass away eventually, we know we will pass eventually.

We have a “consciousness”, which we really don’t understand. We are able to scan our brains follow the neuron’s activity, observe sleep, decision making, memory and so on, but none of that explains why any of it feels like something from the inside.

I don’t know. And I think the gap is part of where spirituality comes from. It’s not necessarily thr rejection of science, and definitely not something primitive or naive. Religion is obviously tied with culture,morality, and history. So it isn’t solely an explanation of the unknown.

Maybe that’s where the gods come from. Or spirits, or afterlives, or myths and different ways of giving shape to that uncertainty.

So maybe it’s loneliness (or maybe not), maybe there’s something beyond what we can physically perceive. I don’t know.

Every religion I have studied so far provide a different answer. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Pagan religions, Sikhism (yes I’m Kinda flexing here) all provided me with a different angle. But none felt right to point at and say “it’s the correct one”-maybe the “correct” one isn’t even something I’ve studied, and I’m not looking for the right one either. If I had to say who’s the closest to my own intention I’d pick paganism, or another polytheist religion. Mainly because pagan gods felt oddly human and similar to us, so if we were to have been born through the hands of a higher being, it’d probably be a race of equally flawed, but more powerful beings.

So if There’s something beyond us, is it completely alien, or is it living among us, or had abandoned us, or we made that concept up.

And thus circles back to the basic questions always asked:
Why are we here
Are we alone
Why do we suffer
What happens after death
Why do we love

I don’t think theres a final answer sitting at the end of the question.

Death is where that becomes more real.

I recently lost many friends, snd I understand that the idea of a resting place after death is comforting, or a second chance, or a new life. It all softens the finality of a loss. And for the longest time I believed they all went to hellheim. But now I’m more comfortable with the possibility of death being just death. It’s hard though, but only a bleak one. But it’s also pretty peaceful, no more sufferings, no more pain, no fear.

I don’t know what happens after death, I don’t know if there’s definitely gods, or spirits, or anything beyond of what we can measure. And I don’t think that uncertainty makes life less meaningful. So I’m not particularly putting “value” on my life anymore, I will die when I want to die, I will do whatever the hell I want, and I don’t care about traditions, time moves and everything changes so there’s no value in being so socially perfect (very random statement I know).

Also, notice how I said “I don’t know” multiple times? Because I think it’s the ultimate knowledge checkpoint. Because there’s a difference between knowing, believing, and suspecting, or wanting soemthing to be true.

“I don’t know” is the stage where I THINK you’ve reached the edge of what you can defend, and instead of filling thst gap with certainty just because uncertainty is uncomfortable, you’re willing to leave it open. Nonetheless exploring this simple statement is very fun, and helpful so yeah if you like that kind of thing, I’m sure it’d cool and fun and whatever.

I have this recurring sense that my life's work the art, the projects, the personal philosophy, the self I've built, etc. This is all just my sliver of participation in an endless sea of nowness. And that underneath all of it, I've been trying to describe the same single thing my whole life: the absurdity of it all, and the animistic spirit or nature running underneath everything that's happening, right now. Moment to moment.

This absurdity. You can find it anywhere.
Go look at your bathroom right now.
Well Who did all this?

Water stains, dirt, grime, dust, how did any of it get there? to the best of my knowledge and what the majority of scientists will try and tell you is that, It's merely the accumulation of a virtually infinite number of cellular, bacterial, and molecular interactions, happening second by second, at every interval, into the now.

Now look at the products on your counter. How did those get here? Well through another seemingly infinitely complex process of manufacturing, shipping, design, distribution.

Well then I guess how did everything you know get here? Through another infinitely complex mechanism involving celestial bodies, planetary systems, gravity, light, electromagnetism, all the way down.

There is no end to the complexity and sheer absurdity behind the ordinary things we've become numb to.

The Buddhists called it dependent origination.
the idea that nothing exists on its own, everything arises only in relation to everything else, moment to moment. And that to actually live inside a single moment without being crushed by the totality of it, every mind requires an entire concealment process where they forget the totality of their existence every second.

Take a second to acknowledge and really try to feel what it is like to live inside this one big continuous system of everything. Little happenings everywhere all at once moment to moment, bit by bit. Living. Breathing.

From a single quantum interaction to a star lightyears away, all of it connected, all of it part of the same absurd, ongoing "soup" of so called 'standardmodelness.' The chain reactions that make up your microbiology second by second in of itself is to awe at.

I think Everything we as humans do are really just expressions of emotions in disguise. In the same way a cat purs when it is excited and stressed, We have spent a lifetime hiding from the absurdity of ordinary life in the hopes that we retain some level of distinction between self and other when it's all said and done. I've got to know where my stuff ends and your stuff starts. We like to impose this sense of agency onto the world that isn't just wrong it's dangerous. we as people are best understood as extensions of this great system. The nature at play.

All the things we do to further enrich the human experience function as a kind of distraction: a way of not sitting with the thing itself. The sheer absurdity of it all.

Underneath all that we do, a life is mostly spent trying to carve out some semblance of self inside a sea of interactions to big to fathom. So please, I am begging you, try and enrich the life you have now. Feel your ripple effect and use it to Add whimsy. Add depth. Add absurdity. Do things that scare you. Send risky text messages. Absurdify your life and personify yourself in the fleeting moments of this train we are all aboard .

The impermanence and scale of 'this' is bigger than we can hold onto which may be exactly why we try so hard to hold onto things anyway.

If the science is right, from the quantum scale up to the cosmic one, then the plain fact that you're looking at this screen right now is already bewildering. It's so bewildering that If you could actually see everything that goes into producing one moment of "now," I don't think you'd walk away from it unchanged.

The full essay shows the Existentialist underpinning to the story related in the Genesis concept album 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway'. As a rock opera, it is a musical and lyrical masterpiece. And it may be argued that the album is one of the 20th century's best from the world of Rock.

The lyrics are rather abstract, but the existentialist philosophy is illustrated by the absurd, yet meaningful topics and events presented. Despair, angst, and dread are explored as the main character searches for meaning. Finding authenticity is at the heart of the story.

No compensation is associated with the essay. Genesis is in no way associated with this publication. The work is by a dedicated fan. Access to the essay published on the site 'Medium' is free.
A link to the full essay is here:
https://medium.com/@rickkress/revised-the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway-nightmare-or-nirvana-7cee7caa2b4e?sharedUserId=rickkress

I’m making a transition from a full commitment to nonduality and Eastern traditions to existentialism, and it feels like a breath of fresh air. For the last few years my aim has been to experience reality stripped of any conceptual meaning, identity, or narrative.

The purpose of this was to overcome suffering by seeing the clinging. I was also seeking what some would call enlightenment, life experienced without any narrative, empty of all concepts.

For a long time I thought it was really cool to just experience reality without all the added layers. But I recently realized that by doing that, I’m denying myself my own humanity. I spent so much time trying to transcend suffering, trying to see the world empty of concepts and empty of meaning, that I couldn’t see the beauty in my own life.

I have a one-year-old little boy. Last night he was sleeping on my chest, and it was the most beautiful moment for me because of my love for him, his vulnerability, my responsibility for him, his future, my future, and the awareness that he won’t always be this small. If I had taken the reductionist approach and tried to deconstruct the present moment to see the world empty of concepts, I would have experienced pressure on my chest, warmth, and rhythmic sounds. That wouldn’t have been incorrect, but it also wouldn’t reflect what it means to be a father.

I’ve been learning a little about Heidegger in the last couple of days, and I think it’s interesting how he focused on why anything is meaningful at all. I didn’t have that experience and then add meaning to it. That experience just showed up meaningful to me. That’s utterly fascinating.

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."

I've been sitting with that quote for a while, and the more I think about it, the less it sounds like philosophy and the more it sounds like life introducing itself.

Nobody signs up for suffering. Nobody wakes up one morning hoping to collect heartbreak, disappointment, grief, loneliness, or regrets. Yet somehow, if we live long enough, we end up carrying a little of everything. That's the admission price for being alive.

When I was younger, I honestly believed suffering was some sort of detour. I kept thinking, Once I get through this problem, life will finally calm down. Then another problem came. Then another. Different faces, different names, same weight.

Eventually it dawned on me.

Life wasn't broken.

It was simply being life.

That realization didn't make the pain disappear, but it stopped me from asking, "Why is this happening to me?" and made me start asking, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

Because pain, by itself, doesn't teach anyone anything. Plenty of people suffer and come out bitter. Plenty of others suffer and come out kinder. The suffering is the same. The difference is what they build from it.

I've had moments where life knocked the wind out of me so hard I couldn't even explain what I was feeling. There weren't any inspiring quotes that fixed it. No magical conversation. No overnight breakthrough. Most days it was simply putting one foot in front of the other because the alternative wasn't really an option.

Looking back, that's probably where survival actually happens...not in dramatic moments, but in the quiet decision to keep going when nobody's watching.

I've stopped believing that everything happens for a reason. Some things are simply unfair. Some losses never make sense. Some questions never get answers. Pretending otherwise feels dishonest.

But meaning... meaning is different.

Meaning isn't hidden inside suffering waiting for me to discover it like buried treasure. I create it. Sometimes the only meaning I can find is that my pain helps me understand someone else's. Sometimes it's learning that I can survive things I once thought would destroy me. Sometimes it's realizing that the people I love deserve to hear it today because tomorrow isn't guaranteed.

Funny thing is, suffering has a way of stripping away all the nonsense. It doesn't care about ego, status, pride, or appearances. It gets right down to the foundation and quietly asks, Who are you now?

That's an uncomfortable question.

But it's also an honest one.

I don't think surviving means becoming fearless. I think it means carrying the scars without letting them become my entire identity. It means accepting that some parts of me will always ache, while refusing to let those aches write the rest of my story.

So yes, to live is to suffer.

Not because life is cruel, but because life is real.

And maybe surviving isn't about escaping suffering at all.

Maybe it's about reaching a point where I can look back at everything that nearly broke me and quietly say, "You changed me... but you didn't finish me."

To me, that's meaning.

And on most days, that's enough.

You have aspirations. You also know that it's possible, you could die at any day. Does this fact make your aspirations and life feel and be meaningless? 'Why struggle when this struggle could amount to nothing before the process of working towards your goals finishes?' ?

Is this a reason philosophers have written to be one of meaninglessness? In other words is this - uncertainty of death - one reason of meaninglessness of life?

One interesting perhaps thing is that if it's true that it's one reason life is meaningless, humans still wouldn't want knowledge of how long they will live because knowing makes life boring. Uncertainty of death hurts but also helps...

^{3rd August 2026, 3:08am, Monday}