Why do you bother?

[Silverade]

The way I see it,  if we don't have an afterlife that just means that we should just do what makes us happiest in the time we have to live.

Leaving your mark on the world, whether it be by the changes you made in society or someones life, or something you made or did is what proves you lived.

If you don't try your hardest to live a life that gives you the most pleasure possible,  or leave your mark on the world or change someones life then what was the point of the time you spent living in the first place? Its just wasted life isn't it?

Thats just the way I see it.

[Felix]

It really doesn't seem bleak to me. The relative ittybittyness of each human life means that I don't have to feel too bad about whether I make it into history books, and I know that the effects of smiling at the postman and paying my bills on time make getting out of bed every day worthwhile.

I don't know that I've ever seen any indicators (in my own life) that what happens to my personhood after I'm dead is an elephant in the room. The big problems are mostly practicalities that would exist whether I went to heaven or just back to the soil.

[TabbytheDruid]

Honestly you are the only person in my opinion who can answer that question. What do you want to do with your life? I was pretty suicidal before I found my extremely open minded other whom (at the risk of sounding cliche) gave me a reason to live despite my mounting pessimism. Then we finally got access to the internet and computer and I had thought about it enough by that point to find out the word for what I am feeling from a few searches, found a few local doctors who do ICATH and now I'm eagerly but painstakingly awaiting my appointment in a little over a week to get my hrt and a day after I have my name change appointment and I've printed off a change of gender change form that the physician is going to sign. You need to stay busy and try not to let it affect you too much, everyone dies sometime and I know it's not very good advice but it's inevitable so there is really no point in worrying all that much. All you can really do is take the proper precautions to prolong your life as long as you want it to continue. Mood altering substances are worth a try, especially if you're getting older you might as well right?

TL; DR My other and my transition give me hope for the future as we're going to travel soon, go backpacking, bike riding, seeing the sights and know that they are in fact good. Just do what you want to do and who cares about what anyone else says as long as you're not hurting anyone innocent and you're happy.

[Sosophia]

i like to not bother and stay in bed i dont feel i need a reason to bother if i dont have any (except to keep myself alive in case it change), sometime i wish i was a plant a flower or a tree with no need to bother for anything.   but i believe in an afterlife and reincarnation

[Jean24]

I hope that someday I might enjoy life for a change.

[JulieL]

Jean, I'm really sorry that you're struggling.

I've definitely been there. I've struggled with depression my whole life, and I've spent a lot of time feeling hopeless and helpless. I'm on anti-depressants and just started seeing a new therapist and things feel like they're getting better.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Hugs.

[Peebles]

I'm kinda a dirty hedonist. I live for the pleasures and happiness of life, if small. For a period of my life I was living day by day so I could eat egg sandwiches in the morning. 

[ImagineKate]

I am not an atheist but I don't really live for the afterlife. In fact, I kind of dread having to die and give up all my worldly stuff. I know that doesn't make me a good Christian, but who really cares. One life to live. After all, if I believed in the afterlife why not just wait until death where my soul is female and I'll be a woman in heaven, right? Ha!

[IAmDariaQuinn]

Who says life needs to have a purpose?  Doesn't it seem kind of narcissistic and egotistical to think that your existence matters in any small way to the universe as a whole?

Why bother?  Because I exist, and I'd rather exist than not.  That's why I bother.  Because, any day now, I'm going to die, and I'm not going to have any memory of my life because there won't be a me to have a memory.  My brain will no longer function, my "soul" as we know it will dissipate into the ether, and I will cease to be.  And maybe this is selfish on my part, but maybe the only purpose I need to have is the fact that I simply AM.  Maybe that's all the purpose any of us need, because if you really need to think you're some kind of superhero or messiah in order to get out of bed and live a life, maybe you're the one with the problem.

But that's just me.  I don't speak for anyone beyond that.

[Daft]

Is human life inherently meaningless? Do we have a purpose? Basically, we are the culmination of billions of years of dust floating around in space, collecting together, gravitating enough to start fusing and sending energy to other little bits nearby. That energy was used in chemical reactions that, after another obscene amount of years, are now able to consciously alter, maintain, or even end their existence. Arguably, we even intimately connect with every other particle in the universe via quantum entanglement. We don't just exist in the universe; we ARE the universe. I find that incredibly remarkable, and I see as having purpose for being here, right now.

If this is the only life we have to live, if it is the only chance we get to touch people's lives and enrich our own, then I consider living it. We can live for pleasure, or we can live a life in which we both grow on a personal level, and touch the lives of others in some meaningful way. It's an oversimplification, but it's probably the most meaning you can expect to find in a godless universe. There is no objective meaning of life, or purpose, but we create our own meaning, both as a society and an individual. For me, it's the acquisition of knowledge, the pursuit of truth, perfection, of human unity. Life fascinates me, and as suffering as it can be and has been, curiosity keeps me here.

[Elle.R]

For me, I bother doing the stuff I do basically because I guess it's better than doing nothing and waiting to die.
Sure the nihilist in me just stares off defeated by cynicism and fatalism at the world but I might as well just try to enjoy myself while I'm alive and find something to do or help others and such.

Certainly doing anything is better than suffering paralyzed by the thoughts of my currently inevitable demise.

[kast]

As someone who does not believe in an afterlife, it's the elephant in the room for me. As I get older and venture beyond my immortal youth, I tend to think about it a lot more often. I am of course talking about why we bother worrying about the quality of life, posthumous legacies and what others think of us. I mean, after we're dead, none of this will matter anyway, irrespective of whether we've lived a full and productive life or resigned to being a couch potato. Perhaps it's the only real consolation we take to our graves, that death is the great leveller and that none of it mattered anyway.

So, given our shared situation, our human condition, how do rise above this bleak and inevitable reality? How do you rise out of bed in the morning and get on with life despite it all meaning absolutely nothing? Why do you bother?

I don't understand the thought process of 'this will end eventually > therefore 70 or so years of living on this planet is worthless'. Everything still matters. It matters even more because it will end. I don't live for an end goal of reaching an afterlife or even a legacy, so I live for all the things that I can experience while I'm alive. It could be just simple pleasures and passing moments, and sometimes it's more. I don't think it's bleak. Life has a lot of meaning to me.

[Elsa Delyth]

If nothing matters, then it doesn't matter that nothing matters. This is the nihilistic inclination that Nietzsche foretold, and attempted to argue against. The idea that absent eternity, that nothing matters. Life, living, creating matters -- like it always did. The absence left by eternity is not a real absence, as it was never there to begin with. The impermanent is always all that mattered, all that matters, and all that always will matter. 

[Kylo]

As someone who does not believe in an afterlife, it's the elephant in the room for me. As I get older and venture beyond my immortal youth, I tend to think about it a lot more often. I am of course talking about why we bother worrying about the quality of life, posthumous legacies and what others think of us. I mean, after we're dead, none of this will matter anyway, irrespective of whether we've lived a full and productive life or resigned to being a couch potato. Perhaps it's the only real consolation we take to our graves, that death is the great leveller and that none of it mattered anyway.

So, given our shared situation, our human condition, how do rise above this bleak and inevitable reality? How do you rise out of bed in the morning and get on with life despite it all meaning absolutely nothing? Why do you bother?

To have experiences and realizations in this brief time I'm alive. There is nothing to lose. It's just an opportunity to see, feel, touch, do things before it's back to nothingness.

The mortality question goes both ways. If mortality and nothingness and inevitably being forgotten means life is meaningless, then endless life also means that life loses its worth. Time is only valuable if you have a shortfall of it, which makes it important to live and live well if you are mortal. That gives life meaning; it is short and it is once only for you, so it is valuable.

An immortal life would have me looking for ways to do myself in eventually whereas no matter how awful this life has got, I've never quite wanted to go through with that because I know my time is very limited. The human brain most likely is not designed for immortality since it quickly experiences boredom and disappointment and burnout... and forever is... a concept we can barely comprehend as an experience. We're designed to survive and learn and reproduce as quickly as we can before it's all over. I don't think a human consciousness as we stand at present could bear immortality. I know I couldn't. I might get a few centuries or even millennia in, but we're talking forever here. Someday I would want it to just stop.

Human lifespans are a bit too short at present to squeeze all of our potential out, and our bodies too limited and start degenerating too early... but I don't think immortality is any more desirable.

I honestly find some religions' answers to the bleak and inevitable reality more disturbing and unnatural sounding than the idea I'll just go back to unfeeling space dust cycling in and out of stars and the void. The latter sounds fine. The idea of hanging out in a heaven or a hell where I experience a particular feeling for eternity does not.

After all, I've been nothingness before, as it were... before I existed and got conceived. Wasn't so bad at all. 

[Colleen M]

After all, I've been nothingness before, as it were... before I existed and got conceived. Wasn't so bad at all. 

I don't fear nothingness at all.  Not one tiny, little bit. 

However, the transitional process strikes me as quite unpleasant and something to be avoided. 

[AnonyMs]

I enjoy life and try not to think about the big picture.

I think people need to find their own way on this one, and if you can find something to give it meaning great, even if its not true. Personally I can't, so I prefer to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.

[Tamika Olivia]

The Gospel According to Whedon is why I bother.

"If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do, 'cause that's all there is [...] if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world."

[Kylo]

I don't fear nothingness at all.  Not one tiny, little bit. 

However, the transitional process strikes me as quite unpleasant and something to be avoided.

I agree, and I'm not looking forward to what my nervous system will experience, but still. That won't last long, I hope.

[KongBeta]

Positive Existentialism!

Life is meaningless and all actions equally so. Therefore go do what you love and employ the >-bleeped-< it adjustment as best you can!

Also food is nice and thats over in the kitchen so I gotta get up for it!

[stephaniec]

you don't have to be a believer in any thing. The fundamental nature of the universe is that it gave birth to the planet earth . The natural of iron is that it will always be iron unless you push anther proton into it , but as it is it will always be the same. There is absolutely no reason as far as the elements of the universe are concerned that another earth born of the same elements , positioned in the  zone for life to form, to create a clone in every way shape and form of the planet earth with all the life forms floating in the same salty goop . Hence without any notion of anything other than an atheistic view you have reason to have hope beyond this particular period of earth time. Please ; this is not in any way an argument for anything other than an atheistic concept based on the fundamental laws of physics.