How do you deal with the realization that ultimately nothing you do in life matters?

33 comments

1. I am very much in the none of this matters camp. I deal with it by enjoying life. I like to have fun and do things that make me feel good. Just because nothing matters doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a shitload of fun.

2. That is a nihilist way of thinking. If you truly believe it you need to work and find meaning in it.

3. Hedonism for the most part. Nothing to crazy. A good beer, a good laugh, a baseball game, a good song, sun on my face on a sunny day.

   I take it in for whatever it’s offering for I won’t be here long and I’m on my way to infinity.

4. What I do matters to the people that matter to me.

5. Thinking that nothing matters is not a realization, it’s a delusion.

6. I just let it wash over me and embrace it.

   When I die, I figure I’ll have at least contributed to making some people’s lives a bit more fun and lighthearted, I hope that I’ll have helped out a few people in a tough spot, and maybe provided a good example for at least a few people to take with them.

   I don’t think there is some inherent purpose to my being here, but if I can at least pull off the things above, then even in the face of total pointlessness and apathy, I’ll be okay with how my life was lived. We’re here anyway, might as well make it a decent place to live.

   All things are temporary. We’ll all be gone soon enough. It doesn’t need to matter. That’s how I see it anyway.

7. It’s the show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter!

8. It’s always been this way

9. I feel like I realized that when I was fairly young, and I think it’s been a positive thing in my life. It’s allowed me to just let go and not worry about a lot of stuff. The bad stuff doesn’t matter much so just have fun, do what I enjoy, and don’t really much care what people think of me. I find it to be pretty liberating honestly.

10. It’s just as true and just as false a notion for you as it is every living person. Nothing really matters at certain scales that everything matters tremendously at other scales. It seems like some people maybe matter more or less because of their stature within society or social groups but really we’re all the same.

11. The book of Ecclesiastes. Everything under the sun is meaningless.

12. It’s pretty unmotivating. If I wasn’t married, I’d probably commit suicide eventually when I got bored enough.

13. it matters to my wife and kids… that’s all that matters.

14. You’re in the existential vacuum. That is a problem. You need to resolve that issue.

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    You need to find meaning in the simple act of living. It’s the adult challenge. It’s not easy.

15. “ikigai” – find yours

16. I stay busy. That keeps the demons at bay… mostly.

17. Doesn’t matter to who?

18. It’s both a dreadful and freeing realization. Long story short, you get to chose how you make your life matter – and to whom. Enjoy 🙂

19. Shift your perspective from the cosmic to the micro. OK, fine: we are miniscule specks on an infinite beach when viewed from far away, but what does that perspective get you? Nihilism, by the sounds of things.

    When you shift your focus closer you will find that everything you do matters in some way. You compliment an old lady and she feels good for the day. You rape and murder a young woman and leave her butchered corpse in the bath, count on it that the family–and those around them–will be profoundly affected when they find her. Don’t do that though; this is just to prove that what you do matters.

    You’re an insignificant speck of sand on an infinite beach. But you’re also the result of 5 billions years of evolution, the bleeding edge of the wave, the only sentient creature in the entire universe with your unique perspective on the world around you. Own your world. You only get one shot to experience this life, so don’t dismiss it just because the universe is large. What a cop-out that would be! You bought the ticket, now take the ride. Find meaning in *everything* you do and everything you do will have meaning.

20. I find I get this way when I spend too much time in my own head. Usually when I get into a rut of work/reddit/TV.

    I find discipline and structure really helps give me purpose. There’s no high-level reason to waking up at 6am, making a good breakfast, exercising, showering, putting on nice clothes, then starting your day, but at least for me it feels great, so that’s purpose enough. I think we surround ourselves with so much instant gratification that we forget that it feels good to do real things and challenge ourselves, like call a friend you haven’t spoke to in a while, fix something in your house, or play hard in your rec soccer game. I find when I am busy and productive my mind is totally at peace when it’s time to rest. And I don’t think that’s uncommon considering how many people get depressed after they retire. I don’t think a life of leisure is actually enjoyable for many.

21. Time is only linear to us animals – it’s eternal on its own, along with space. What we do now echoes into forever, so may as well make it dope. Take pleasure in bringing good into the world because we will live it again and again.

22. Life is what you make it and only you can make it. Maybe its time for some changes? Maybe try something you wouldnt have tried before? Its all on you.inwent through that phase in my late 20’s early 30’s. 35 now and I try to make the best of it.

23. Nothing mattered before I was born, but shit still happened, now I’m here is it really any different?

24. Zen Buddhism.

25. “Matters” is a point of perspective. Lots of things matter. They matter to me, and the people who I care about. Will my life ultimately be consequential? Will the whole human existence make a real difference to the life of the universe as a whole? Probably not, but that doesn’t have anything to do with my life.

26. Do something nice for someone else. Then something matters. Do something nice for someone after that. That matters too. Rinse and repeat often enough, then your life begins to matter.

    Don’t wait for stuff to happen to you. Make (good) stuff happen yourself.

27. Even if nothing matters, it doesn’t prevent us from making things matter. You can make purpose. Reducing pain and suffering can matter. Making a perfect widget can matter.

    Personally, I think fulfillment is found in striving for health, happiness, and purpose. All three are linked.

    And then one day you will be dead, so what do you care? The waves you make when you are alive can ripple across generations and you don’t need to be a Steve Jobs to make those ripples. Just being kind to a person on a day might have those ripples and you might not even know. Your art might matter.

28. We all hit this. For those of us that aren’t in a career that is obviously helping people, or good enough at something that we’ll leave a mark on society in some way, we have to find that reason to go on elsewhere. Some find it in having kids and propagating their bloodline or raising good people.

    I’m none of those. I’m leaning into gentle hedonism: i do a job that doesn’t necessarily hurt people (hard in capitalism) but doesn’t help much, enough to live a life that makes me happy without fucking over other people too badly. Find what keeps you happy and do that.

    Do I travel more than I should so my carbon footprint is larger than it should be? Sure. Do I also help out the few friends I have by being a person they can rely on for a kind ear, and helping out with their rent when they’re coming up short? Yeah. 🤷 ancient Greek philosophy probably would frown on something I do, but whatever. 99.99% of us don’t make an impact beyond our social and family connections, so lean into those while keeping yourself happy as a #1 priority.

29. Life is a single player game. Most of us will do good to remember that. Gotta be nice to NPC’S but also gotta enjoy the side quests.

30. Zoom out. Our entire species doesn’t matter on a large enough timeline.

31. you can either be captive by that realization or let it free you .

    If nothing matters… then do what you please 👌🏼

32. So if nothing matters you might as well enjoy it.

    I’ve never seen a depressed spec of sand.

    Welcome to life. Meaningless? Maybe. But doesn’t have to be bad.

33. You’ve accepted that nothing really matters–but you mention success. What is success when nothing matters? Financial success doesn’t change any of that–do you think amazon or wal mart will stand the test of time given that they’ve barely been around for the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things?
    If success made people feel any better then we wouldn’t see celebrities killing themselves. The fact is that most people tell themselves that reaching point X will make everything feel better and most people never get there so they’re able to keep telling themselves that but we’ve already seen from the people who do achieve their dreams that it does fix anything. That they feel just as bad as ever–that hole is still with them.
    The truth is that none of it matters in the sense that it’s lasting.
    But lasting forever isn’t the same as meaning.
    IMO All that really matters is trying to live in a way that you see as right and to enjoy the time you have with people you love (unless you just really don’t want anybody around at all which is cool too).
    With happiness, I’ve found that you can’t hang it on some *thing*–you have to find it wherever you are, right now. If you’re always just waiting for it to happen then you’re doing it wrong. Look into mindfulness. Try to find some things, even small things, to derive some happiness from. If you’re only allowing yourself to feel happiness from ‘big’ things then you’ll have to keep finding bigger and bigger things to feel happy at all–if you do that then, of course, you’ll always reach a point where you either can’t get anything bigger than the last thing or there are no bigger things to get; so you’ll always be doomed to, eventually, be unhappy.
    So take a moment to appreciate the small things. Appreciate how incredible the world is and the people around you. Think how many trillions of things have existed and didn’t have the capacity to take it in and even appreciate it.
    I’ve felt a lot of the same things as you and been dealing with them for the past several years. I’m 38 now and I feel like I’m starting to see that you have to kind of come up with your own definitions of things (like ‘success’ that we already talked about). What kind of person do you want to be? If you aren’t on the path to being that person–why? If that person isn’t someone you could, reasonably, become–then why are you giving yourself goals you know you’ll fail?
    Start trying to treat yourself like a friend–I’ve been learning to befriend the kid version of myself lately and it’s helped. That kid is still inside of you and is, likely, playing a part in what you’re feeling.
    If you enjoy photography–then just do it. What matters is that you enjoy it and it allows you to express yourself and if it inspires something in other people then that’s even better; but absolutely isn’t essential for you to enjoy it. If you’re just doing it for other people then of course it’ll feel empty. So do it for you because we aren’t here that long and that time could end at any moment. So why not enjoy the time we have and try to have a positive impact on the people around us?
    I probably can’t do something like cure all disease but I can make my niece a pretty bad ass dollhouse. And, to her, there’s nothing more amazing in the world than that. Someday I’ll be gone but the people who are still around will, hopefully, carry something from me that I’ve given them. Even if it’s just some small little thing they learned from me–it’s a piece. And you never know who you might be affecting in that way–so I try to keep that in mind and try to be kind. Because a single spark of kindness can, sometimes, make a big difference to someone and, IMO, a small spark can sometimes turn into another and maybe even another.
    I dunno–that’s pretty rambly and I’m in a bit of a rush so I apologize. Overall, just try and live well–I’ve found that trying to live up to what I view as morally right has helped me feel a hell of a lot better than I ever did when I was living pretty selfishly.
    And you’ve got to learn to find happiness wherever you are–I used to find misery wherever I was because, I realized, I was looking for it and so I always found it. When I started looking for things to be happy about–I was able to find them too. Doesn’t mean I’m skipping to work every day but it does mean I’m not miserable and appreciate the things I have more.

    Hopefully something in there made some sense or helped. good luck op!