There is no point to life. If you ask someone "why?", over and over, until the only thing left to explain is the common reason for doing anything at all, for living, for being happy, you will be met with irrationality. No one has ever given a good reason. Motivations get reduced to feelings, not reasons. All of our reasoning begins with premises of (1) feeling a will to survive and (2) feeling a desire to be happy. Rational justification for every act begins with "Assuming you want to live and be happy..."
Depression, in my experience, is the diminishment of these feelings. When you do something that should make you happy by all reasonable measures, you aren't happy. When you do something that should make you sad, you don't feel any worse. When you do nothing, you don't feel any different. A lack of those fundamental feelings is to blame.
There is no way to think yourself out of it because the solution is irrational. They are feelings that healthy humans have, nothing more than that. Willpower is your only tool here. You can irrationally will yourself to seek solutions. You can practice clever ways to coax those feelings back into existence. You can take medicine to promote those feelings. In any case those feelings will probably return, as depression is typically episodic, and you can start being happy again by doing what's good and doing what's right and being successful.
But the better you do the harder you'll fall when those feelings subside again and you're given another lesson about how all that "good" shit you did doesn't matter. One night when your happiness is in full swing, it'll just hit you. You wonder why you did any of it. And no matter what you do or think, your happiness is gone. Habits may carry you a while, but all motivation has vanished. You won't feel like pursuing your own happiness, but you'll feel a lot of other shit that's not so pleasant. You'll pretend nothing has changed, but it's just an act. You'll stretch your willpower to cover the void. If it's enough to bridge the gap, then congratulations on being functioning. If not, then welcome to the club.
P.S. I'm not suicidal. Don't worry about that. I've received a lot of messages from sufferers of depression, thanking me and wishing me well. Though I've responded to very few, I do feel a responsibility. And as I've been acting out this week, it worries me that someone may view my weakness as an excuse to indulge in their own, perhaps doing more damage to themselves than I'm doing to myself. I've willed myself to behave and focus for long enough to write this to remind you that our feelings are diminished, not gone. Even as I write this, I feel a spark, and I hope this reminder gives you one too.
I feel this, at the end of the day it's what's in our heads that people don't usually see that is most important to us. And often times, all the talking and discussion in the world doesn't make us feel any more enlightened or any less confused.
Edit: Here's something I posted on another website...
Maybe because you feel like you aren't making a difference in the world. And that's perfectly fine, most of us are born and we die and no one (except our family) ever remembers our name or who we were. Most of us are expendable, anything we can do chances are there is someone halfway across the globe who will do it better for cheaper. That's just a harsh reality of life. You have to accept it.
Life isn't a race, to be the best or the most famous or the richest. So don't do anything with the sole intention of trying to change the world, it's not going to happen like that. Try being happy and success will come to you. You might not have all the answers, now or ever, but everyone needs a reason to keep going.
I find that pursuing long term goals that take great effort is often still worth it in the end as it provides me with happiness/money/security/etc. Maybe thats just because I have become accustomed to ignoring the ultimate futility of life.
Anyway, you are my favorite player on my favorite team and I wish you all the happiness in the world. Go watch a funny movie with your wife/gf or something .
Hope you feel better. I don't think I can comment on the content you have specifically in this blog but for what it's worth, some of what you're writing is dead-on for me too. For what it's worth, I think you're a chill guy and wish you the best. It's a way of thinking as well, I'd say. For sure in one way, all the happiness you've had can seem to disappear in an instant, sometimes when you're so happy. But at the same time, the joy you can get from accomplishing something or just for being alive and being able to talk with so many amazing people is always there for the taking, and the triumph can make all your struggles worth it.
What bothers me is that the episodic mood swings of depression never follow a logical pattern. You drift in and out seemingly randomly. I could feel fantastic for a week and then hate myself for months.
When you try to work towards something during the happy week just to have it crash and burn the second you get hit again is beyond frustrating. Then you feel like shit.
As an aspiring pro gamer who is constantly held back by horrible depression that feels more like a bad excuse to everyone else, I definitely give you more credit that most other people who cannot relate. GL.
How about because you already are? You ask why live. I ask why change your state of being? If I cannot logically give an answer to the former then you cannot logically give me an answer to the latter. At least not one that meets your definition of "good reason".
Really though, everyone lives for something different. For you I would hope that you want to live for your wife, and for yourself, and for whoever else you love. (you love yourself right? I don't think you can love someone else until you love yourself, help me out if you think I'm wrong).
If you know what you're living for then the question becomes quite ridiculous, and perhaps that's why answers are irrational. Life isn't rational to begin with, so why should we have a rational reason for wanting to continue to live?
On October 09 2012 13:39 travis wrote: What point to life would you possibly expect, lol.
You get hungry right? Do you go eat when you get hungry?
Let go of your longing and just be happy with what is right in front of your face!
Kind of silly that you say that when I've had many days where I've gone without eating specifically because I've hated myself.
I did that too -- back in my high school "emo days." Once I got off my pity wagon it got better. The problem is that it's so easy to fall right back into the self-pity rut -- it requires major lifestyle adjustments, not just attitude checks. Many people just wait for things to improve with as little effort as possible, or use pharmaceuticals without any additional counseling or therapy, and this is why they remain blue. Then there's all of the people that have lots of reasons to be sad: rape, molestation, death of loved ones, poverty, abuse... They have a tougher climb then we'll ever know?
There is no point in life? There really isn't. And once I told myself that life became a lot easier haha Now I just live day-to-day, try new things, see what's up. It's better than my old strategy, I'll tell you that.
I watched my favorite baseball team blow a 3-run lead in the bottom of the 13th inning to the New York Yankees, and I felt like this was certainly the end of the season. 'Depressed' is definitely one way to describe how that felt. After that loss, they won 9 out of their next 11, and won the American League West Division which NOBODY including myself thought would be possible at the beginning of the season. The past is always true, we have to accept this, but the up-shot is that the future never actually happens (or else it would be the present). Take some time now to enjoy yourself, and I'm confident the rest will return as well. Best wishes, hope to see you performing at a top level soon-- I know you have the talent. You have it as much as any Starcraft player I've ever seen play BW or SC2 or any video game for that matter. Nony/Tyler 2012
1: Why would you need a "meaning" when you can master magnificent things like musical instruments, or StarCraft: Brood War? Those things are motivation enough to get out of bed.
2: Why would you need a "meaning" when you can try to understand the universe? You yourself are part of the universe, and you were created in the universe, by the universe. When you investigate and understand the universe, something self-aware and conscious that was created by something that is not conscious, asks what the universe is and how it works. So it's actually the universe asking itself what it is, and attempting to answer it, in the form of you. And that's pretty fucking awesome.
3: Concepts like " good ", " bad "; " evil ", " healthy " and " unhealthy " are words that humans attached to existing things. What is health, when you really think about it? It is certain configurations of protons, neutrons, and electrons in a creature's body. And even though the standards for what is healthy change over time (Dying at the age of 50 is unhealthy today, but wasn't in the past), we can OBJECTIVELY say that some creatures are more healthy than others. Even though we invented the concept of health, and even though the standards for health change over time, it is a fact that some creatures are more healthy than others. The word " health " is describing something that would exist whether the word existed or not. Whether humans would observe it, or understand it, or not.
Now, if you replace the word health with evil, that wall of text would still be correct. Suffering is universally disliked by living creatures. The very definition of suffering means that you dislike it. One physical sensation or emotion might be suffering for one creature and not for another, but suffering is disliked by both. Suffering is objectively bad for living creatures.
Remember that " good " and " bad " are concepts invented by living creatures. The universe itself does not care whether you have a good or a bad life, whether you suffer or not. But it is, as a matter of fact, bad for living creatures to suffer, and good for them not to. For THEM. Not for the universe, but for them.
We have observed and imagined things like being raped, having your eyeballs removed with a knife, and having your intestines cut to pieces while in your belly, and we have assigned the word " bad " to them. We haven't decided that those things are bad, we have only assigned a word to describe what they are. And to us, they are, as a matter of fact, bad. (Because they make you suffer)
It is bad for life to suffer, and good for it not to.
The universe doesn't care whether things are good or bad, but there are things that are objectively good, and objectively bad, for living creatures.
As a living creature, I have decided to enter the struggle for justice, to reduce suffering. To make things better for all life.
PS: I am aware that it's not objectively better for me just because things are better for other life forms, but that huge wall of text can be applied to yourself. When you make your life better, it's objectively better. What your life just became is what the word " good " means. I think you should at least care about that, even if you don't care about making the situation better for other life forms. That's why you should master a musical instrument, Brood War, or live with someone you love!
PPS: I suppose if you ONLY care about making things good for yourself, and not making the universe good, then you might as well kill yourself since it doesn't matter when you are dead anyway. But the reason I live is to make the world good.
At its worst it gets reduced to this blind grey-toned apathy. Where the expenditure of effort is useless because you believe it leads nowhere. You may expend a bit of effort, feel a little bit better, and then hopelessness sets in again, and you confirm in yourself that the expenditure of effort was indeed useless. Which discourages you doubly from expending any more energy into anything.
For me, ironically, this is the worst mindset to take-- the expenditure of effort does in fact lead places. I just have a lack of ability to gauge a healthy amount of effort. I either expend way too much and not reward myself for it, or expend none at all. At my worst, there is no ability to balance.
Often, at the moment of deciding 'do I invest my energy into doing this?', a lot of issues often come up: 'well its useless because Ill just feel crappy afterwards anyways', 'Ill be judged on not performing even if I do put the effort in', 'ill be equally judged if I dont put effort in', 'people will think x of me if....' etc. Inevitably, it leads me to throw out the decision making process altogether-- all of the mental crap that goes into deciding whether to put in effort or not is exhausting, so I escape from it all by engaging in things that take zero effort. (which leads in a downward spiral more often than not)
But when I am more clear-minded, I realize that a rich emotional tapestry is inherently meaningful. Perhaps there is no objective 'point', but there needn't be a singular point to things if we can make meaning. I enjoy times when I find things meaningful more than when I succumb to the meaninglessness of apathy. For me, what is lacking, more often than not, is the ability to balance effort, reward myself for effort, and decline to put effort in when the situation calls for it. I find that what I need most in my worst of times is to sidestep all the mental crap I subject myself to when I deliberate over putting effort into something or not, contextualize it and see it for what it is, see where it came from, and let it rest.
It's easier said than done however. So I can relate.
Your fans love and support you no matter what Tyler. We just want to see you happy, because seeing you on stream or at an event when you are happy and enthused makes everyone happy. It really is contagious. I know whenever I see your name pop up on the stream section I get a big stupid grin on my face. Stay strong Tyler.
EPT
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