No 'depth' to me...

I know when this all started - The first time I started smoking cannabis 20 years ago. At first it seemed like enlightenment - I could see the absurdity of life around me, watching the 'drones' scurrying about living their carbon-copy lives without question.

That led to apathy though - The age old question of those that think too deeply for one reason or another - Is there higher purpose or are we all just allocated a time slot to bluster through? Why was I born in this time and place? What if our universe is just a subatomic particle in another?

There's a quote from Blaise Pascal I stumbled onto that expressed exactly the sort of lonely horror creeping up on me:

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me..

I was never the same again.. Eventually I gave up the pot, and moved on with my life.. Got married and have a family of my own now, but despite having episodes of feeling happy with the life I've built there's always that nagging sense of hollowness and insignificance.
Experiences seem to 'fall through me' and I feel cheated that I can't be truly spontaneous without that strange sensation of checking how I interact with the world - Watching my life go an as though it's a film.

Just my story - Hope it may give comfort to anyone that has the same feelings.. You're far from alone.

Andy

Hi Andy,

There's no meaning to life, and we weren't put here for anything other than a chance occurance. We won't be here forever either, and nothing we do now will ever affect how the Universe ultimatey evolves. We are quite pathetic, in fact, but I can extract hope/optimism from this apathetic way of thinking. It gives me a sense of freedom - i.e. I can do whatever the hell I want to right now but it wont' matter a damn in 1,000s of years time.

Kevin

There's no meaning to life

Don't loose the faith man.

I dind comfort from that thought though, rock101.

Grrrr i just wrote a huge paragraph of my entire life's reflexions about this specific subject, asking yourself what your life has meant after an eternity of living with depersonalisation disorder and what realisations it makes you come to about life and existence and i made an error by deleting a word i wanted to keep so i pressed the Ctrl + Z buttons thinking that was gonna make the letters come back one by one, like the undo button, and it ALL got deleted! i'm FURIOUS. I will come back later and try to re-write it again.. i'm too angry to do it again right now.

Chucky wrote:Hi Andy,There's no meaning to life, and we weren't put here for anything other than a chance occurance. We won't be here forever either, and nothing we do now will ever affect how the Universe ultimatey evolves. We are quite pathetic, in fact, but I can extract hope/optimism from this apathetic way of thinking. It gives me a sense of freedom - i.e. I can do whatever the hell I want to right now but it wont' matter a damn in 1,000s of years time. Kevin

This is interesting to me because of its juxtaposition with the Blaise Pascal quote. Pascal was a deeply religious man, who came to his beliefs through soul-searching. He definitely believed in a deep meaning to life and in an afterlife. He is considered a great man within the Christian faith.
Not trying to take away from your beliefs, Kevin. Just had to laugh at the comparision between the quote and your response.

I have come to the conclusion that I should manufacture my own emotions and drives. If life no longer has power over you then surely that is the next step. Unless you are so scared that you are just locking your feelings away. I also pondered quantum mechanics and our place in the world. It will shrink you but the day anyone can convince me that a universe manifesting out of nowhere is a mundane event is the day I make my mind up and admit defeat.

Ultimately you have to see that you hit a wall in logic and that all you can do is enjoy yourself. There's nothing else you can do. Unless you know how to cheat the laws of reality like the universe did when it created itself.

Do you?

albie wrote:I have come to the conclusion that I should manufacture my own emotions and drives. If life no longer has power over you then surely that is the next step. Unless you are so scared that you are just locking your feelings away. I also pondered quantum mechanics and our place in the world. It will shrink you but the day anyone can convince me that a universe manifesting out of nowhere is a mundane event is the day I make my mind up and admit defeat.

Ultimately you have to see that you hit a wall in logic and that all you can do is enjoy yourself. There's nothing else you can do. Unless you know how to cheat the laws of reality like the universe did when it created itself.

Do you?

That's right... ...if you take the logical approach, all you'll come up with is that all you can do is enjoy yourself. For those thinkers amongst us who are ignorant/stubborn, however, they continue searching for a meaning and end up getting depressed (or if they're lucky they get into Astronomy!).

"...I could see the absurdity of life around me, watching the 'drones' scurrying about living their carbon-copy lives without question.

That led to apathy though - The age old question of those that think too deeply for one reason or another - Is there higher purpose or are we all just allocated a time slot to bluster through? Why was I born in this time and place? What if our universe is just a subatomic particle in another?"

I've thought about this to no end as well; I've had multiple nervous breakdowns -- collapses of the ego, so to speak, which I'm sure you can relate to based on your username -- as a result of those existential crises. It got to the point where I wasn't surprised by anything anymore; I had crazy ideas, and developed delusions at one point -- stress almost got to the point of driving me to psychosis -- and yet, none of them seemed strange.

Anything can be possible. And it wouldn't matter if I were another person, or things were like this or that, or if bicycles grew on trees or aliens appeared at the supermarket, because it would do nothing to answer the questions or get rid of the hollowness.

Consider the second paragraph you wrote, though: "That led to apathy, though --" You referred to human beings as 'drones' in the paragraph before that. This is very, very important: the only remedy for hollowness is fullness, and the first step I've found is this: 'love other people as you love yourself.'

I used to see people as drones because I was constantly comparing the depth of their problems with the depth of my own. They seemed to be drones because they were just following vain desires, doing hollow, pointless things -- and so, all I saw was vanity and hollowness and pointlessness.

There was a big change when I stopped comparing other people to myself; it was like a light bulb went off, and it was the first time I remember depersonalization feeling like home -- really, a serene place -- instead of something lonely and horrifying. I didn't see people I was talking to as drones, but as human beings; and how complicated is it?

Everyone suffers. Everyone wants to stop suffering. It's as simple as that. It doesn't matter what someone's problem is; maybe they have problems with alcohol, or a relationship problem, or something really ordinary like they lost a credit card or something. Stuff that doesn't seem important to people involved in heavily philosophical discourses -- but what is happening, ultimately?

The person is suffering, and they want to stop suffering. They're no different from you at heart; the hollowness comes about because we project our own inner hollowness onto other people, and see them as hollow as well. Truth be told, they aren't hollow; they're living beings, as valuable as anyone else is -- as far as you can get from drones. Again, it's just the inner hollowness of a person that makes other people look like drones; it's judging other people and an emptiness with one's own acceptance of life, not an emptiness of other people.

So...could I be someone else? Yes. Do I know why I'm here? No. I could easily work myself up over a million things right now; here I am posting on a forum I've never been to before, sharing my thoughts with someone I've never met before, and as far as I'm concerned, I feel like I'm in this world alone. I have nothing to hold onto.

But that's the blessing that comes with depersonalization or any such feeling of detachment -- when it's used properly, I honestly think it's one of the most beautiful things in the world. For every ounce of loneliness and horror, there's an equal part of serenity and security.

Not knowing who I am, not having any sense of identity -- but still retaining memories, and being able to have compassion, and a connection with other human beings -- that makes me much happier than I've ever been. Before it was like I could only connect with people if I knew them very well, or they did this or that for me, or I looked at them as a 'parent figure' because of severe separation anxiety -- but in 'forgetting myself,' it feels more and more like connecting with people indiscriminately is how things are meant to be. And mental torture seems to be very good at achieving that end by making people realize how horrifically lonely life is, and then realizing that it's something everyone has to cope with, and so creating continuity and connection between people instead of making the suffering of individuals end with themselves.

Keep in mind that the very fact you can have these crises is because of the expression of other people; your mind is a compilation of influences from things outside 'yourself.' So you can be anybody, but the point is, it doesn't matter, because at the heart of existence there lies an undeniable unity.

"Just my story - Hope it may give comfort to anyone that has the same feelings.. You're far from alone."

Look at the tenderness you showed in that post. Far as I'm concerned, I don't need any more proof that that's what's lying behind all the hollowness and perceived meaninglessness of existence; "you're far from alone."

And how close that is to the truth. How can anyone be alone when the very fact of his existence -- the union of a sperm cell and an oocyte, and the meiosis and mitosis of the resulting zygote -- is irrefutable proof that unity is all that's real?

So I don't believe that there's no meaning to existence -- not for a second. I just know that I can't know what that meaning is. And hey, I got so messed up in the first place as a result of bad experiences that traumatized me over time; what's so unreasonable about believing in compassion as a tenet of the existence and sustenance of all life? I don't know what the whole purpose is, but I know that it feels good to connect with people, and I would rather everyone feel serene and loving than frightened and hateful -- and I know there's a lot of peace in letting go of attachments. I'd argue that that's what we're here to learn to do, but it's just a thought, right?

"There are times when hands touch ours, but only send an icy chill of unsympathizing indifference to the heart: when eyes gaze into ours, but with a glazed look which can not read into the bottom of our souls - when words pass from our lips, but only come back as an echo reverberated without replying through a dreary solitude - when the multitude throng and press us, and we can not say, as Christ said, “Somebody hath touched me:” for the contact has been not between soul and soul, but only between form and form."

"...That is a lonely, lonely moment, when the young soul first feels God; when this earth is recognized as an “awful place, yea, the very gate of heaven;” when the dream-ladder is seen planted against the skies, and we wake, and the dream haunts us as a sublime reality."

-F.W. Robertson

http://www.fwrobertson.com/sermons/ser15.htm

Religious or not -- I don't see why it would matter either way -- I recommend reading that sermon. It's one of the few pieces I've found that captures the heart of that loneliness -- and reading about F.W. Robertson's life, there's even more relation; he suffered terrible physical pain for most of his later life, and mental torture just as badly...and it's nice to have someone to relate to, you know?

I also recommend "A Taoist Guide to Practical Living" by Eva Wong. The writing in that book has a brilliant way of tackling overwhelming philosophical problems in a stupidly simple way; it's like it undermines all the worrying you might have, and gives you a simple answer to a very complicated problem. I don't know how else to explain it, but really, it's a great read, and whether you want to check it out or not, I'll put it up here for anyone who might be interested.

In any case, thank you so much for sharing; and by the way, I think there's a lot of depth to you, just as much as there is to everyone else. By the sounds of your post you've got a lot going on in your heart and mind; about as far as I can see someone getting from being a drone.

Take care =)

I just wanted to thank Will_Fox for thoughts.....if we are all alone and cutoff, we can just accept that and see it as beautiful. Very touching in a deep part of me to think of loneliness of humankind (including a man like Christ) and how this could all unite us.

The issue for me comes when others around demand an emotional reaction...is it untruthful to lie and say you feel x or y when you really don't? to make them feel less alone?