Existential Crisis?

I recently came across a link somewhere, somehow, and suddenly remembered my bout of existential crisis a while ago. (Also this, and this, and maybe this too.)

*What follows is a very long narrative that talks about my life, because I really love myself. It is rambly and semi-coherent.

A year ago (or something like that, my grasp of time has never been very good) I decided to stop being afraid of horror movies and things like that. Mainly because it was such a pain to be so terrified of peeing in the middle of the night.

I thought things through, and realised that I couldn't do anything to stop my death anyway, so I'd much rather just say "Okay, I won't struggle. How about you kill me quickly and painlessly? Thank you, by the way." I was also rather comforted by the fact that after death comes nothing, because you wink out (I'm an atheist, and I think Heaven is hugely overrated. Also Heaven is a concept that will never work properly.)

The peeing problem was solved, but then came along other problems.

For one: why am I okay with being killed?

If I were to be killed one night, then I would have accomplished nothing, changed nothing, and done nothing meaningful. My life would have as much impact as an ant... to a human. In essence, I started thinking about how pointless life was.

Specifically, about the stupidity of the world in general.

I have a way of thinking that I like to call the "ultimate goals and the constraints" way of thinking, because then everything becomes very clear. You have a goal, and you think of a way to achieve it, and along the way there are constraints.

For example, you want exceptional marks on a test (goal) and you come to the realisation that cheating is the easiest way to do that (how to achieve goal). However, you also know that if you're caught, then things would become very sticky and unpleasant (constraint). Therefore, you either study - and forget about cheating - or make a plan to ensure that your act of dishonesty is never found out.

That's how I do things, but unfortunately other people don't function that way. You see, I do things in a very logical way - and some people say that's cold or unfeeling, or simply not how things work - but all in all it's the best way to think. Because even making a cup of coffee is a goal. My way of thinking eliminates all those messy emotional things that screws up everything they touch.

This way of thinking also partially tears down the system. In Asia, we have this complex about our parents. For the most part, we obey our parents (besides the fact that they house us, feed us, tolerate us, we've also been raised to behave that way). And when we don't obey our parents, when we don't defer to them, we feel this annoying squiggle of guilt.

Maybe you want to go to a friend's house for something, but your parents say no. Whatever you do, they still remain firm, so after a little while you just kind of give up because parents are just such phenomenally annoying creatures.

What I do with my parents is a very different kind of thing. The first thing I do when they say no is to ask them why. And if they refuse to tell me why, then I'll say something along the lines of there's absolutely no reason for you to deny this information. And there really isn't. No means no, right? So it shouldn't matter if they tell you why not. Unless they don't have a proper reason.

Now, after they tell me why - because they're worried about my safety, for example - I come up with ways to make these issues become nonexistent. If they worried, then they can drive me there. If not, I'll take public transport. And the bus trip to my friend's house is shorter than the bus trip to my school, so it's ridiculous to claim that going to my friend's house isn't safe while going to school is. And as a last resort, I tell them that I'll ask my friend's mother to give them a call.

I fail to see how they can still refuse to let me go after all that.

I've told this story to some of my friends, and quite a few of them claim that that doesn't happen in their house, because when their parents say no, it's no. And I tell them that I see no reason why stupid societal norms should get in the way of what you want (which is quite harmless). Then they tell me that it doesn't happen because they respect their parents/it just works that way in their family.

This is a very important thing to take note of, because my way of thinking is very straightforward and not hindered by social norms. I push and push with logic until they're in a corner and they have to give me what I want because that's how logic works. You can't deny logic. If it turns out that there is absolutely no reason for my parents to forbid me from going somewhere, then it would look pretty bad for them if they just said NO. BECAUSE NO. They would come across as unreasonable and unpleasant human beings.

This lead me to an epiphany, I suppose. I realised that most people just go fine, I give. They do that not because logic isn't on their side. They do that because of stupid reasons - their parents are intimidating. Authority is intimidating.

What they don't realise is that they can argue while seeming very polite. (This can be solved with my special way of thinking: whatever they want is their goal, the constraint/problem is the unreasonable asshole that says no, so to get rid of the constraint you pretend to be polite and demure and wriggle around until you get your way.)

I was very frustrated with this for a long time. I basically went around advocating that we should speak up even if the inbred fear of authority tries to prevent us from doing that. And I found that not many people wanted to do that.

Why?

I don't know. I literally don't know. Maybe if someone explained it to me then I would understand on an intellectual level, but emotionally I feel none of it.

Let's go back to existential crises for a while. According to the article, it stems from four major issues: death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.

Death is an inevitable occurrence. Freedom, in an existential sense, refers to the absence of external structure. That is, humans do not enter a world which is inherently structured. We must give the world a structure which we ourselves create. Isolation recognizes that no matter how close we become to another person, a gap always remains, and we are nonetheless alone. Meaninglessness stems from the first three. If we must die, if we construct our own world, and if each of us is ultimately alone, then what meaning does life have?

This frustration that I felt was something like isolation. I went around feeling really misunderstood; I went around feeling that I was misunderstanding. No one else thought like me and no one wanted to think like me. I felt that maybe they were incapable of thinking like me. Maybe I was a deformity. During that time I continually felt like I was standing still, alone in the whirling mess of the world. And no one cared; they simply went about their own business.

I was phenomenally confused. I just couldn't understand, and eventually I decided not to understand. Which, really, just further helped that isolation bit along.

Then I went back to thinking about horror movies and death. And again I asked myself: am I fine with dying without accomplishing anything? Everyone goes on about how someone's life was "tragically cut short" and I wondered what would happen if my life was "tragically cut short" too.

Somewhere in that wondering business, I realised that I would most probably accomplish nothing before I die anyway. And I realised that I was edging towards death every single day, and I only knew two languages and have only been to two countries. And my younger self thought that it was horribly sad.

My younger self essentially thought that I was old. And somehow, for a few months, I limped around feeling sorry for myself. I felt no inclination to do anything, and everything made my head hurt. I wanted to curl up on my bed and die, because I felt that facing the world and trying to do something worth doing was just too futile.

Thus, having fulfilled two out of the four, my younger self was swamped in this gigantic quagmire of self-pity and depression. Also existential crisis. I couldn't figure out just what the fuck I was here for. I wasn't even particularly good at anything. Okay, all right, maybe my English was better than my peers at the time, but even then I wasn't good enough. Which made me even more depressed.

Why had I been born? I started thinking that maybe it would've been better if I'd never been born, if I'd never known the stress of simply being alive. I started feeling all blank - all I could respond with was "okay" and more "okay"s. I just couldn't find it in myself to continue living. What was the point? What can I do? What can anybody do?

Eventually I got out of it, but those thoughts never really went away.

Which was the third issue - meaninglessness.

You might want to know how I dealt with it, but I can't tell you because I didn't. I didn't deal with that pesky issue of existential crisis at all. I'm just trying to actively ignore it. Which doesn't work very well, which explains my bouts of melancholy, which doesn't matter anyway.

I actually don't know if I care

Okay what the fuck I know I actually care

Then again it's terribly tiring so maybe I should stop

Okay whatever

Sometimes I try to enjoy things, and then out of nowhere Existential Crisis pops up again to say hi. My internal monologue goes fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, and I go to the fridge.

I don't actually know if this post has a meaning anymore. It's just a semi-coherent bunch of words about how I, at age fourteen, somehow managed to feel like I've hit my midlife crisis. Then again, if I solve this existential crisis shit, then I won't have to worry about midlife crisis. I tend to stick to what I've decided.

Anyway, my conclusion is that solving this existential crisis isn't at all a pressing issue for me. It does make me feel shitty sometimes (actually at night it hijacks my brain and makes me curl up into a ball of misery) and gives me headaches sometimes, but I've gotten pretty good at ignoring things. Also you don't need to know the meaning of life to be happy. (For the most part.) The actual important thing is to not spiral into depression, which is !!! a pressing issue. Definitely.