Do you find that life feels increasingly empty despite unprecedented access to information, technology, and comfort? More and more people are losing purpose, direction, and existential grounding in the modern world.

Sociologists believe that frameworks of wisdom, ritual, and community have been disrupted by modernity, and intelligence alone has not been enough to replace them. This leaves a lot of people feeling lost, without a bigger sense of meaning present in their life.

comes + goes

tbh I've never really been able to get over the feeling of guilt of realizing everything we use in modern society comes at a cost of others lives having meaning + purpose - eg. the devices we all post on here from coming from sweatshops

I avoid that feeling often enough and enjoy life but it's always... there...

Yes, absolutely. I am actually using ATRL more than the social media because it doesn't feel as rage-baity (imagine that )

Opening Instagram or IG it's just constant bad news after bad news. I cut IG and I think Reddit is next tbh

I feel like meaning isn't something that's given to you by destiny or the universe (like I previously thought) but something you have to create yourself, which feels more liberating and less pressuring or daunting. It doesn't have to be this huge thing, as long as it's something most authentic and right to you.

Quite the opposite, actually. I like the concept of "optimistic nihilism" and how life has no inherent meaning, so you don't need to place harsh expectations on yourself. It almost feels liberating in a sense because I am much more forgiving of myself if my life isn't going the way I plan it.

Edited June 22Jun 22 by Jotham

22 minutes ago, Da Vinci said:

I feel like meaning isn't something that's given to you by destiny or the universe (like I previously thought) but something you have to create yourself, which feels more liberating and less pressuring or daunting. It doesn't have to be this huge thing, as long as it's something most authentic and right to you.

I, for one, suffer from it because meaning to me lies in human connections and we're more isolated than ever, more so as a gay man

30 minutes ago, Jotham said:

Quite the opposite, actually. I like the concept of "optimistic nihilism" and how life has no inherent meaning, so you don't need to place harsh expectations on yourself. It almost feels liberating in a sense because I am much more forgiving of myself if my life isn't going the way I plan it.

This.

Some years ago when I was extremely depressed, I was in a random Discord group expressing everything I had inside. One of those things were my doubts about the meaning of life.

A random user told me: "Why do you need a meaning? Just live", and though it may sound like a generic low effort message, for me it was a literal life changing response.

To this day I've been living with that idea in mind and it made my life more appealing.

Thank you random user.

I was born with one, was already asking myself these questions at the age of four

I think it comes with a price of the world expecting you to automatically know what to expect and want from your life despite many people not knowing even towards the old age. I think we should just live how we want to live without setting any enormous expectations because even people that know what's their meaning of life experience stagnation. We don't know how much time we have so why bother with stuff like that when we can live in the moment and enjoy what we have without the pressure of worrying about what's about to come or what will we have to do with your lives.

i'm suffering from a dick crisis