I have been having problems to wake up from my bed, and that’s why I was advised by a friend, which had the best intentions, that I should find a purpose in life in order to wake up every morning full of energy.
She said it in such a way that made it sound like finding a purpose in life was an easy task, so I asked her: “so…what’s the purpose of life?” and she explained that she meant a little goal, a minimal thing that making it could make me happy and give me energy to wake up in the morning.
A lot of people in the world are terrified of dying, but as a person with a history of suicidal thoughts and intents I can say that sometimes not even that fear is enough a reason to keep living, much less a goal. And if I couldn’t have that thing, how much lower could the bar get on having a goal?
My friend explained many times that she didn’t meant a big purpose, much less “The purpose of life”, but a tiny purpose which may only have meaning to me, like going to the gym 5 times a week, for example. But I just kept thinking that if my life wasn’t important enough, even for me, then which difference did it make, wasn’t having a tiny purpose just begging the question? It sounded irrelevant.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that I could achieve anything I focused on, I just didn’t see the point in doing it if life was irrelevant.
I also can see the value of having little goals throw every phase of your life in order to achieve something and keep you going throw the days and nights. But I stopped seeing the importance of such things when my depression appeared, because I started to question the importance of my life, and became suicidal.
I would have given anything to see things the way I did before, but I couldn’t, and I still can’t. I life without meaning sounds more proper and fits better with the reality we face. Shaping reality based on my needs and what is comforting is just not what I do.
But a life without meaning doesn’t have to be depressed, after all, at the end of the day no one have a true meaning and we just go on.
Most people are not especial and are not going to make history, in my case, even my mother told me that I wasn’t especial, to my face. I knew I wasn’t especial even in the limited lap of space and time in which my life is taking place. It was really hard for me to accept that my life had practically no meaning, but what I learned is that life is important because we make it important.
When you look at the universe you realize how small and meaningless we are, but your life can have value to you and even to humanity. We are the ones responsible to give our lives meaning and value.
Just like morality and the value of life, at least for the time being, the meaning of life has to stay as a subjective thing, and that, for now, is enough for me.
