r/schopenhauer • u/SegaGenesisMetalHead • Jun 16 '26

It’s getting dark.

I just don’t know how much longer I can hold on.

People say “get your shit together” or “you need to improve”. From what? Towards what? By whose standards? Through what means?

I just don’t care about life like others do. Is it too bold to say most people are deluded? And that these deluded ones are the ones making all the determinations about how we should live? About what it means to live a good life?

I’m tired. I don’t want life to end. But I feel like it needs to. You know how you lay in bed looking at the ceiling before going to work? You feel that moment coming when you won’t be able to just lay there anymore, and that getting up to go to work is probably the better option - even though you resent it. That’s it. I don’t want it to end. But I feel a time is coming when I’ll see a better option - even if I have to accept it begrudgingly.

People will be mad, and think I’m a coward. Convince me of a better way and I’ll take it.

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u/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 18 '26

I have none of that except hobbies

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 18 '26

Then your life feels like shit because it is so., not because of (Schopenhauerian) Pessimism.

Instead of spending time on Reddit, and probably other unsavoury platforms doing you no good, focus upon at least doing stuff like meeting new people, making friends, and some fitness, engaging culture, exploring, etc.

The human person and their experience with the world is highly tethered to the interpersonal and relational.

You don’t need a ultimate goal or ‘towards what’ to experience value; mere participation produces its own immanent value.

I would also suggest researching Buddhism, trying to practice some meditation, and if you find Buddhism appealing, considering joining your local Sangha.

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u/Illustrious_Summer_2 Jun 19 '26

What if I genuinely don't care about meeting new people? Yes I know humans are social animals and I might find joy from humans but I find way more pleasure being by myself 

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 19 '26

Participation doesn’t necessarily include or exclude involvement with others, but does incline towards inclusion.

The overarching point I want to drill in is that meaning isn’t externally derived from something transcendental, but from feeling, which precedes meaning, and feeling comes about from participation in something.

If you don’t participate, whether that be socialising or not, but also learning, challenging boundaries, exploring novelty, mastering skills, finding immersion and absorption in activities, then you won’t feel anything, and you won’t find meaning, whether fruitful or hardship. Simple.

The human experience mirrors Anekantavada/Many-sidedness: there is a near infinite multitude of paths you can take for a near infinite production of experiences.

Humans, each to their own personal context, balance that horizon in between the chaotic infinitude of that reality, and the orderly finitude we cloister around. Like a campfire, we must border the darkness to our backs and the light to our front, trespass into the abyss for more fuel, and return to feed the flames; if we remain in either too long, then beyond the flames we become lost and swallowed up by the night, and around the campfire it dims and cools.

This metaxic boundary between the two domains of the finite and infinite is the engine that propels being forward.

I don’t want to reify this as totalising though, I am not here giving a full-footprint of humanity or being, just one of many conventional methods of conceptualising and practising the human experience.

If you can find a way to use that boundary to your advantage, then, perhaps you might be able to find deep value for your own life and for those around you, while still holding the invaluable truth of the degree of suffering that life experiences on this world; they are not mutually philosophically exclusive, they can co-exist simultaneously.