What is the Purpose of Life?

The existential question that I have struggled with for months

While riding the Seattle streetcar on a cloudy Thursday afternoon, a huge idea popped up in my head. It was, “What is the purpose in life?”. I feel like every time I have a good week or so, I question why I have deserved such a thing. Overthinking and self confidence has been a big struggle of mine for a while, especially during my time in college.

I feel like this is such a hard question to answer. No two people have the same answers. The optimist will say one thing and the pessimist will say another. People could be in similar situations and have different outlooks on life. Huge events can change our thoughts in mere hours. The best part, is that there is no correct answer. Life is not like exams in class.

I know the biggest way to solve this question: do things that you find meaningful in our limited time here. For me, some of those things are to spend time with family/friends, practice the piano, watch sports, go on walks, eat quality food, and explore new places. When it comes to career related stuff, I want to work in the field of education to help impact kid’s lives. On top of that, going out of your way to help others is always key.

Yet, my ability to question myself can ruin all of these. Being neurodivergent can lead to your needs changing on a whim. The corruption/rigging of games in sports can make it hard to watch at times. Going on walks can be hard when I struggle to get out of bed. It feels like everyone is so busy in college that it can be hard to actually spend time with people. I love teaching, but the curriculum does a terrible job of prioritizing student’s needs.

But my biggest hesitations are much larger. My fear of the unknown can be paralyzing at times. Like the Buddha said, the only certainties I know for sure are suffering and death. I have accepted that the world will end soon. This has made me focus on short term enjoyment over any long term aspirations. When it has come to careers, I’m scared of job interviews

I feel like many of those short term pleasures only give fleeting happiness. It gets really easy to chase dopamine in college like sports games. It’s not that I shouldn’t do these activities, but I need long-term goals and community as well.

Another important part is that I feel like I’ve lived longer than I thought. The last 2 years have been the most difficult, as I’ve been in and out of severe depression. Mentally, I feel very old. There are days where I’m tired and don’t want to get out of bed. There are lots of days where I will just numb myself online because I’m scared of facing my large, daunting fears.

I must also talk about how society moving away from God can cause such lack of meaning. I am very much aware of the problems that religious extremism cause. However, I also think religion has a ton of benefits. It prioritizes family, community, and discipline. It allows for people to feel like there’s something greater that will protect and care for them at all times. It condemns many dangers of modern society like porn and casual sex. We should let people comfortably share their positive experiences with religion just like their negative ones.

One thing that I fear about falling into is the blackpill. The blackpill is an online sphere of incels who use their insecurity about themselves to harm other people, especially women. I personally do not support the people who use the blackpill as a way to harm society.

But, I do find some very important truths to the blackpill. In modern society, we are trying to make everyone equal to each other. However, that is objectively not true. There are people who are straight up better than others. Some will succeed, others will fail. We are not robots who are great at everything, nor will we ever be.

One key example of this is in judo. Because of my size and coordination, I won’t be as good as someone who is larger, stronger, and more coordinated than me. I will also say that learning skills at older age is much harder. I know some optimistic people can say you can learn anything at any age, but right now I find that to be to be much harder when I am older.

I will say that the blackpill is starting to kill my desire for exercise. I have decided to stop doing judo because I feel like I hit a wall. I stopped running because I saw a video on Goatis about how running and exercise causes excess stress. I barely play basketball anymore. I tried the gym a while ago but never liked it. I get improvement happens with time and discipline, but that process can be painful. It is especially painful when you don’t feel like you have any support. If the struggle wasn’t a strong enough reason, the weather being extremely cold half the time where I live(Seattle, WA) makes going outside very discouraging.

I feel like this is very important to talk to when it comes to dating. There have been many men who have struggled getting women due to lack of desirable traits. As someone who is short, skinny, and autistic, I feel like am at the bottom of the genetic lottery. I fear that my opinions on things like diet will drive some people away I worry if I will ever be able to have a girlfriend. It can be emotionally defeating at times.

Perhaps, I have became jaded by a lot of traumatic experiences in my life. From 7 years of helpers in school to struggling with roommates in my apartment, it feels like things will never go my way in life. I’ve definitely done a great job overcoming a lot. I am getting very tired of struggling through things though and having a hard time staying motivated to succeed in life.

I think societal circumstances are also to blame though. In my modern life video, I say how moving people away from nature has been a bad decision. I also think how the cost of living is rising is definitely making things harder to see. I want to have a house, not be a renter for my entire life. I want to be able to afford healthy food without having to break my back for it.

Or maybe, I just set expectations too high for myself. I have always been someone who has wanted to be truly great at life, not just average. It was my motivation for clubs in high school. It was my motivation to get into sports journalism. It was my motivation for trying as hard as I can in class. Yet, all of this has just given me tons of mood swings, burnout, and misery. Perhaps, being in a society of being away from nature is caring this. Maybe it’s social media. Maybe it’s that everyone around me is shallow. All I know, is that I struggle to feel consistent contentless and happiness in my current situation.

I also really want to be a father. I really enjoy being around kids and helping them. I’ve heard how being a father has helped many people gain purpose and meaning in what they do. It forces you to care about someone that isn’t yourself every single day. My biggest concern is that I don’t want to raise a kid when I have trauma or mental health issues. It is difficult to realize, but you need to heal yourself before you can heal anyone else.

So, how are the ways that I can turn these thoughts into action? Right now, I’m not sure. I have 4 months of college left and I want to enjoy as much as possible. This can be difficult to do when you’re mentally done with college. But, there are many people that I really enjoy here. I want to spend quality time with them as I will not get to experience something as unique as college again.

What I have realized is that your environment is key to how much you succeed and fail in life. You need to put yourself with people who believe in me. Right now, I feel like I don’t have that. I feel like many of my friendships, while cool, are very shallow. I feel like when I’m down that nobody is there to support me. My scrolling on the internet has caused me to go deep into topics that I feel like nobody else knows about. I just want something new and different. Badly.

I feel like my environment has also made me not want to help others. This is because I feel like I never get back for what I try to give to others. It has caused me to feel very salty and resentful inside my head. I think that a huge cause of this is the competition and scarcity mindset. We have been trained to work against one another instead of helping one another in the name of competition.

All I know is that I expect my life after college to be radically different from my time in college. I know that I’m looking for more friends who share my interests of health, nature, and philosophy. My goal isn’t to be popular with people. I’ve tried that. Instead, I want to be much more aware of how I use my time.

A few things I know are that I want to get back into musical composition. I want to I want to keep growing on Substack. I want to try a full year of working in education to see if that will be the best long-term fit for me career wise. If not, maybe I’ll try a business or something else.

I know that I will need to try lots of new things as well. I need to start working on how to get back into exercising and actually trying to go to the gym. I need to get back to getting outside again. I should look at things like psychedelics to improve my executive functioning. I should figure out a diet that works long term.

At the end of this yapping and yammering, I feel like I do have a list of things that will help me give meaning in life. I need to(somehow) use all of the remaining executive functioning I have left in my brain to consistently do so. I don’t know if this will make me a winner, but I have seen other people make big improvement. I just gotta get that hope flickering in me again to do so.

Anyways here’s the list(not in order)

1. Try psychedelics/other methods for executive

2. Find a religion/faith I like(even if it’s not Judaism) and stick to it.

3. Have a meaningful job where you actually impact others life(not being in a goddamn cubicle 24/7)

4. Find friends who have common interests in things besides sports(sports are

5. Start lifting/doing exercise besides walking, preferably with others

6. Start creating classical music(God’s music, not trashy modern music)

7. Move back to somewhere warmer(thanks seattle for the meme, but SAD is affecting me)

8. Find ways to consistently emphasize gratitude as a key part of my life.

9. Relax more(I guess be on here less yay)

I want to thank everyone who got so far reading this. I know it’s a tough read, but I would rather be honest with where I’m at than be positive for the sake of being positive. I really hope that these articles wake people up to our current reality in the world. Have a great day, everyone.