A common thought finally hit me today. The thought pop out in my end randomly, everything we do is really just an excuse to keep our minds busy for our inevitable end.
We create all this distraction from hobbies, jobs, family, technology, entertainment, science and religion to keep our minds occupied. We invented money to buy us more time to be occupied.
It is like the whole thing is just a fidget spinner.
Curious how you approach this?
I used to suffer from a lot of existential dread. Like, not sleeping because time spent sleeping was bringing me closer to the time I’d no longer exist.
Whether you worry about it or you don’t, some day you will stop existing. Worrying about it frankly doesn’t help. In fact, it detracts from the dubious pleasure of existing. In my experience, not having fun existing makes me no longer want to exist.
A lot of people advocate for distraction, although personally I think that’s just a temporary escapism. I think we need to confront our eventual non-existence, accept it as a fact of life, and then move on by trying to find meaning in what we have left. Way easier said than done.
CBT is a school of therapy about restructuring our thoughts, and it has a lot to say about confronting the fear of the unknown. Cultivating spiritualism and religion is a traditional way of approaching the problem, although I’d encourage people to seek out and learn what other cultures are saying instead of blindly accepting what their parents’ church says.
Personally, I had a religious experience while accidentally tripping balls on psychedelics. I’m not sure I’d specifically recommend that, it could just as easily backfire, but it helped me and you can find lots of testimonials with a similar story. Maybe it’s better to start with therapy and religion