World Full of Nothing

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As most of you know, I kind of get depressed a lot and I just am starting to get even more depressed the more I know about things. I feel alone and isolated, I have family and whatnot, but the very fact that I am alive brings a lot more questions on my plate than answers.

My own mortality scares me incredibly. The ultimate fact that my existence is without inherit meaning scares me. The lack of information of my function in the world scares me. The preemptive and inevitable centitude that these questions are inherently unknowable makes things only worse - not even marginally better.

Everyone assures me: "Seb, these are questions we all have to face in one form or another.'' I agree that these are factual premises that ultimately binds us all together as human beings. But the fact that it generates universal solidarity doesn't even remotely ease it. I wish there was a driving purpose in my life that is augmented by inherently observational facts - perhaps even scientific facts. I wish there was genuine meaning in a world that is medicated by artificial meaning.

I was jettisoned into the life I am living right now, secure in the knowledge that I will not be here forever. Nothing is worse than being aware of this basic premise. It is a lot like being in a train heading on a collision course with a mountain, and not being able to get out. I am screaming, whining and utterly agonized of what will happen, but there is nothing I can do, just wait.

Matter exists, quasars, exists, galaxies several million light years wide exist, but me. We. What about us? I wish there was some kind of consolation that could sober me from the anxiety that I inherited from even contemplating this reality.

Praying that you will feel better ...

Many older Aspergers say that they had struggled a lot with existential questions like yours when younger, and say that it got better or even much better over the years. Trust them. As Aspergers have trouble trusting and knowing that "many older Asperger" means really "many older older Asperger" and often ask for statistics, you could also make a little poll here on wrongplanet for the scientific facts. ( I know that this is not the scientific facts you meant ...)


It sounds a little bit stupid or even callous, but what most people do is NOT to think about the end, because it just makes them feel uncomfortable - and enjoy their life. Lot of your anxiety comes because a change is happening with you. Asperger experience more profound transformations and (re-)integration into the social world later in their life compared to NTs. Once you are further in the process, things will get easier.

Life in itself has something vital and some instant purpose, maybe you have the same feeling when contemplating a quasar and its energy (?). Then variety is pleasant in itself. I guess you perceive galaxies as beautiful, I am more into people and societies. Everything, including galaxies, can serve as a meditation about the impermanence of all things and that nothing perishes completely. Buddhists meditate about that and they say it helps them to deal with their being scared by death. I personally am not really scared by death, but maybe you could give those techniques a try?

Then relaxation techniques and exercise could be of some help to keep the anxiety at a reasonable level. Breathing, for example, can either intensify your panic or soothe it.

World full of everything, universe full of nothing. Hope you come out of your existential crisis okay, they're never fun to go through.

I like this quote from Mark Twain when it comes to the worry that I once felt when I realized I will cease to exist after I die.

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” - Mark Twain

I found Carl Sagan views on this topic to help me through my own existential crisis, wondering what the point of life is. We ourselves create life's meaning.

I will try to remember this quote.

I had once kind of a "metaphysic" dream which has helped shaping my ideas a lot about death and the universe. The dream was preceded by some quite nightmarish dreams which were ignited by a loss of hair after a food poisoning and the anxiety aroused by this. In a first dream I dreamed that I was loosing my hair in bundles (actually I had been loosing not that much hair, just much more than usual), in the second that my finger nails came off by touching them with another finger, in the next the fingers and ears or something fell off, and in the last of these nightmarish dreams my nose and the part around my nose fell off and the inner part of my body was laid open to further decay. The very last dream of the whole series was very different: me disassembled in millions of little pieces speeding around in the universe. Was a very good feeling.

At school I had also liked a lot the poem "Dorfmusik" from Johannes Bobrowski, which I had chosen to learn by heart due to an assignment. The scenario is that a dead man (the narrating I) is being carried in a coffin to the cemetery, all people say that his life was build on sand and a raven presses his wreath to be taken from him. In each stanza the trumpet and trombone are playing and like accentuating the man s feelings, and it is pretty clear that what all people and the raven is saying are not judgements, but nothing but the anxiety of the man himself. In the next stanzas the raven caws from afar, the friends state that he is leaving the time and the man("outspend his life and fooled to the end") is buried knowing that his "handful of rue rice" wont be taken away from him.