do you feel like your life has a meaning?
I think the answer you are pretty much going to get on this board is that life has, objectively, no meaning. That is what I think. However, I find that socializing makes me more energized and less depressed (even though I have no desire to socialize and would just like to stay home by myself all the time). It's like it causes my brain to shift gears and often snaps me out of depression, at least for a time, even if I don't have the greatest time when I'm out and start wanting to go home after a couple hours.
I think the answer you are pretty much going to get on this board is that life has, objectively, no meaning. That is what I think. However, I find that socializing makes me more energized and less depressed (even though I have no desire to socialize and would just like to stay home by myself all the time). It's like it causes my brain to shift gears and often snaps me out of depression, at least for a time, even if I don't have the greatest time when I'm out and start wanting to go home after a couple hours.
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"energized and less depressed?".
just b/c something makes you feel "energized and less depressed" does not mean that that activity, merchandise, or precious lil "person" has inherent meaning. or any other meaning.
for example, sleeping, Kit Kats, surfing the internet, and maybe at most. several other things. at this point. now that i am senile. make me feel energized and less depressed.
but that does not necessarily follow that the meaning of "life" (or the meaning of my "life), is to sleep, gorge on Kit Kats, surf the internet.
This is a very late response but what you wrote really resonated with me. I'm about to be 27 too and in the same boat. I purposefully distanced myself from people because they didn't like me but know i just feel useless and like a burden. For me, the thing that makes me happiest is helping others. Even with the smallest thing,it makes me feel useful and like i was put here for a reason. Maybe you can try the same too.
RetroGamer87
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Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 36
Gender: Male
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Location: Adelaide, Australia
Same. I find it very strange that I enjoy socialising yet I have no desire to do it.
I only desire to continue doing it once I'm already doing it (most of the time). Maybe not socialising makes me depressed.
_________________
The days are long, but the years are short
Pleasure and happiness is good, pain and suffering is bad. Everything we pursue must be to mitigate the latter in favor of the former, for us and the world around us. I think it gives me meaning.
I'm different. For many years I worked with damaged and traumatized horses. It was hard work. It was often frustrating, not the horses, but that all their problems came from stupid humans. I lost count of how many bones I broke being kicked and thrown. I was stood on, run over, bitten and even chased out of paddocks by the really angry ones. As I said, it was hard work but I always believed it was worthwhile. That's what gave my life meaning. I was doing something I believed in. I think believing what you are doing is worthwhile is more important than happiness. Happiness is fleeting. It's nice but never a permanent state. A sense of commitment to what you are doing, a belief that it's meaningful, gets you through the long, difficult and sometimes disappointing interludes between the happy bits.
For me, starting with a horse that could only be caught by running them into a small yard and gradually building trust to the point where I could walk up to them in a paddock and halter them and then months later having the horse see me coming and it comes running up to the gate to be haltered, those breakthroughs were the happy bits but the work inbetween the breakthroughs was often a tough slog. The belief in the meaningfulness was what sustained me.
_________________
I have a piece of paper that says ASD Level 2 so it must be true.
An extremely wise, academically smart, visually handsome, socially adept, skinny, and homophobic man once had the nerve to tell me "the meaning of life is helping people !"
Makes me wanna puke
He acted so innocent, like he never hurt anyone before in his life
Besides, every party has its own euphemisms
The Holocaust had a euphemism :. "ethnic cleansing"
Besides even if the meaning of life was "helping people", that does not explain why there are so many precious lil "people" in the world
He acted like Allah, Buddha, God, Krishna and etcetera descended from the sky and said "Justify your existence!"
And he answered "I'm helping people".
Does not excuse his homophobia
But now that I am 34 pretty much given up on trying to find a "meaning".
A higher Global Area Functioning would suffice
Better to have a functional meaningless life, than a dysfunctional meaningless life
Some claim that the meaning of their life is:. Their job, their religion. Good causes. Like racism, sexism, homophobia, classism. "Helping people". Animal rights. And et cetera.
But maybe I think that those are just good methods to spend their lives, but not the "meaning"
RetroGamer87
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Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,970
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Life not having meaning is a meaning that life has. That's what the madness in me wants to say but. it's a little bewildering and also. You have to make meaning in your life. It can be something as simple as something you enjoy doing. Or helping others but. It's there nonetheless.
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ever changing evolving and growing
I am pieplup i have level 3 autism and a number of severe mental illnesses. I am rarely active on here anymore.
I run a discord for moderate-severely autistic people if anyone would like to join. You can also contact me on discord @Pieplup or by email at [email protected]
RetroGamer87
Veteran
Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,970
Location: Adelaide, Australia
_________________
ever changing evolving and growing
I am pieplup i have level 3 autism and a number of severe mental illnesses. I am rarely active on here anymore.
I run a discord for moderate-severely autistic people if anyone would like to join. You can also contact me on discord @Pieplup or by email at [email protected]
Nope no meaning, unless you make it meaningful.
Some solutions to your problem:
1. Seek out other people in groups and meetups with similar problems to you. It may be easier for you to be in the company of those kinds of people, that also includes people on the autism spectrum. Go on Facebook or google to search for groups in you're area. If you don't find anyone maybe you can move to another place with more opportunities and activity?
2. Buy yourself a Virtual Reality headset to meet people online. I do that. It's a good place to practice being social and finding people similar to you. VR is good because you can see, hear and speak as well as touch stuff, you can't do all those things in a chat You feel as if you're in another world with VR and people being actually there with you. And if it's too intense you can easily just leave or block or mute people, can't do that in real life haha The VR headsets with the most social applications are Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. I can recommend VR Chat and Rec Room as places to meet new people and practice being social The cheapest and best offer right now is the Oculus Rift at $349. But you'll need a very powerful computer and that can be expensive. Don't buy cheap VR, it's not worth it and not the same as the high end stuff.
Last edited by Enceladus on 25 Nov 2017, 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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