Everybody feels that life is meaningless nowadays. The problem is narcissism: one needs something outside of oneself - one might say something GREATER than oneself - to pursue. I suggest that you read Conquest of Happiness by the great British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (it's out of copyright and can be downloaded for free online). Since reading this book, although suffering debilitating and almost permanent anxiety, and sometimes depression, I have never since felt that my life didn't have a purpose.
Quote:
To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: 'Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.' I do not recommend this course of action to everyone, but only to those who suffer from the disease which Mr Krutch diagnoses. I believe that, after some years of such an existence, the ex-intellectual will fin that in spite of is efforts he can no longer refrain from writing, and when this time comes his writing will not seem to him futile.
05 Oct 2018, 1:53 pm
