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Has realizing that our time on earth is finite changed how you see life? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago by marc4267@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Lately I’ve been thinking about death: it happens to all of us, it’s something normal, it will happen to me, I could even die tomorrow. Even if I don’t want it, I will die, like everyone else. I’m not exceptional just for being me. No matter how many gods I invent, no matter how many opportunistic preachers I pay because they promise to save me.

I’m just a monkey among 8 billion monkeys, I’m insignificant. Nothing wrong with that. It is what it is.

My life so far: take the path of least resistance. I have a job I don’t like much but I do it good enough so I don’t get fired, I enjoy cooking, fishing, poetry and drawing, hobbies that are cheap. I don’t need to keep up with the joneses.

There seems to be a perception that somebody like me is a loser, lazy, somebody who fails to live up to his potential, maybe I should try to do something exceptional with my finite time on earth, leave a legacy…

But that doesn’t appeal to me. After I die I won’t feel nothing, nor will I care about a legacy, so what’s the point?

Did realizing your time on earth is finite change how you see life?

Feel free to point out if this is me being depressed or if I need to snap out of my misanthropy, as somebody put it. I don’t consider myself depressed but after seeing and reading what humans do to other humans I don’t trust the better angels of our nature can make the world a better place.

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[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah everyone gets that way sometimes. It's part of not being a kid any more. There's a whole branch of philosophy called existentialism around it, not that I know anything about philosophy. Anyway, the feeling passes (or else, it can be treated). You have to decide what's meaningful to you and go with that, even though it's not meaningful to the cosmos.