Existence doesn't make sense...am I the only one who has experienced this?

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Ben_Sinner

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Every once in awhile I’ll start having these thoughts and realize that…well…life makes absolutely no sense. It is so abstract. Even the concept of logic and reason is abstract and the concept of God/Heaven/Hell is abstract…even atheism is abstract…pretty much to sum it up…LIFE IS STRANGE AND MAKES NO SENSE

Am I the only one who has had these type of thoughts before? Are they common? To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it
 
No, you’re not the only one.

That’s why people lock themselves into their own passions and hobbies. It distracts them. Because upon further analysis, life doesn’t really “make sense”. And it scares people- as its scared you and its frustrated me. So they look down and concentrate on their careers, gadgets, the news, trivial daily happenings, etc.

And don’t get me started on how people avoid thinking about death. I think that’s a major reason that a lot of people have religious or spiritual beliefs. While it can be a starting ground, it should not be the only or primary reason for faith, though.

But if you look hard at the order of the universe, I think you’ll find some universals that at least we human beings resonate with. Mainly love- especially with family and friends. I think if we knew for fact that we were made for X reason by God who spoke to us directly, some of us would complain about not having the freedom to do Y. But since we live in a universe where we are free to do X Y and Z, we complain that we have no purpose, because we could do anything!

Frankly, we’re here and life can be great. So I see love as primary in importance as well as the preservation of life and people’s ability to choose their own way of life and path. the modern world disagrees with me though. It sees material gain as primary, with the destruction of life as a good way of preserving the love-lacking life of many, and the push to make everything “the same” (much more efficient for marketing, don’t you know?) and force others to live a certain way (with the use of legislation and ordinances among other things) is ever-present.

Anyway, sorry if I went on a tangent there. In conclusion, yes, I know how you feel.
 
Life is truly a mystery.
The big question is this: Do you put your faith in a loving God or do you put your faith in nothing?

We do not have to understand, just love.
 
There will always be things that don’t make sense IMO. Sometimes we make the condition worse by pushing too hard for the answers. We, as a species, have made great strides toward understanding many things about human existence and most likely will make more.
 
You’re not the only one. I occasionally have such thoughts as well - despite the fact that I have explicitly dealt with such thoughts rationally several times, and every time I have decided that things do in fact “make sense” (even if that sense is not always readily apparent or even possible to completely understand).

Abstractness has never bothered me (math nerd, the word “abstract” just makes me think “free from annoying distractions,” more or less), but I have definitely experienced that feeling of nothingness - that nothing makes sense, nothing means anything, and that there really just isn’t anything at all.

But clearly there are things, and reason and experience both show that this sort of nihilism is false. Despite this, the non-rationally motivated feeling that nothing makes sense or matters etc keeps popping up though. My own approach is to either reason through the thoughts and show them false if it’s been a while, or dismiss them out of hand if it hasn’t.

The thing to remember is that we all occasionally get random thoughts and things for no reason whatsoever, and the correct approach is just to “test all things and hold fast to what is true.”
 
Why doesn’t life make sense to you? Is it because you are conflating God with secularism?

Or am I missing the question?
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Every once in awhile I’ll start having these thoughts and realize that…well…life makes absolutely no sense. It is so abstract. Even the concept of logic and reason is abstract and the concept of God/Heaven/Hell is abstract…even atheism is abstract…pretty much to sum it up…LIFE IS STRANGE AND MAKES NO SENSE

Am I the only one who has had these type of thoughts before? Are they common? To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it
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Yeah, I’ve been there too often enough. Iron Donkey’s post mirrors my own thoughts almost perfectly. I’d venture to guess that you, Iron Donkey and anyone else who experience this aren’t overly concerned with or weighed down by materialism.
 
I haven’t experienced that, by existence you mean you’re own existence, presumably? Or the existence of other things - that you can perceive due to your existence?

If you lack the ability to comprehend, it proves that you are finite. If you are finite, you aren’t what caused your existence. What caused your existence must be uncaused and infinite, and this is where things begin to make sense.

But what I have experienced, and what your question seems like to me - though I might be picking you up wrong - is what I call the devil’s bias. A time of irrational doubt, when the doubt can be falsified and the object of doubt can be proven to be true, yet are still pulled to irrationality. This can’t come from anything other than the demonic. In times like these you simply fight to obtain the rational truth, hold onto it and cease to entertain anything on the contrary. The devil will soon stop wasting his time and leave.
 
The meaning of our existence here is the most concrete thing that could be.

Our life in this world is very short and determines where we’ll spend the next
two thousand billion trillion years, to start,
so knowing the way to make that two thousand billion trillion years, to start,
good years by trusting and seeking God makes perfect sense.

What is the problem? 🤷

No one has defined what is the problem with making sense of the world. :confused:
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Every once in awhile I’ll start having these thoughts and realize that…well…life makes absolutely no sense. It is so abstract. Even the concept of logic and reason is abstract and the concept of God/Heaven/Hell is abstract…even atheism is abstract…pretty much to sum it up…LIFE IS STRANGE AND MAKES NO SENSE

Am I the only one who has had these type of thoughts before? Are they common? To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it
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:twocents:

I would say that life is the antithesis of what is abstract.
It is very simple, we each are alive, here in the moment.

The fact is that explanations become like vapours in the burning light of the reality of being.
Of course we have painc attacks when our foundations are built on illusion.
The only truth that will ultimately satisfy is Reality itself.

Beyond the ideas and abstraction, the “nothingness” is actually fullness, ever-present , holy and personal.
Rejoice, God is calling you.
 
Everything in the Catholic faith makes sense and it is coherent.
Have faith, pray the Holy Rosary every day and meditate.
One step at a time.
If your life doesn’t make any sense then you would have already been dead in Hell.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Every once in awhile I’ll start having these thoughts and realize that…well…life makes absolutely no sense. It is so abstract. Even the concept of logic and reason is abstract and the concept of God/Heaven/Hell is abstract…even atheism is abstract…pretty much to sum it up…
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Thoughts are abstract but they imply thinkers who are far from abstract!
LIFE IS STRANGE AND MAKES NO SENSE.
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Life is certainly mysterious but it doesn’t follow that it doesn’t make sense. The inability to make sense of the world is simply evidence of our ignorance.
Am I the only one who has had these type of thoughts before? Are they common? To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it.
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For anyone who thinks deeply sooner or later awareness of our nothingness is inevitable because we are not necessary! In fact nothing in the universe nor the universe itself is necessary. We didn’t create ourselves and cannot justify our existence. Life is a precious gift for which we should be grateful.

Our power to think is a sign that existence is not senseless. Meaning cannot be derived from meaningless things nor can thought and emotion be derived from things which lack thought and emotion:
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing of this.
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All our dignity then, consists in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.
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Pascal: *Pensées *347
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Every once in awhile I’ll start having these thoughts and realize that…well…life makes absolutely no sense. It is so abstract. Even the concept of logic and reason is abstract and the concept of God/Heaven/Hell is abstract…even atheism is abstract…pretty much to sum it up…LIFE IS STRANGE AND MAKES NO SENSE

Am I the only one who has had these type of thoughts before? Are they common? To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it
Click to expand...
I think without God’s revelation such as Holy Scripture which is the word of God the meaning of life and existence would be very difficult to ascertain which the history of mankind and all the different philosophical systems which are not based on God’s revelation seem to prove. Though we can know some certain truths by the natural light of our intellect such that God exists as the CCC says.

In the gospel for today’s Mass, Jesus says: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life.” And in the beginning of the Gospel of St John, it is written “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

Jesus also said " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Jesus is Truth. If we want to know truth, the meaning of life and existence, we should meditate on the life of Jesus Christ and his teaching as it is recorded in the holy gospels. Jesus backed up his teaching with his miracles which prove that his teaching is from God which the man born blind today in the gospel reading also says:

The man answered and said to them,
“This is what is so amazing,
that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.
We know that God does not listen to sinners,
but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him.
It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.
If this man were not from God,
he would not be able to do anything.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it
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You may well be experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul which is a sign of spiritual progress:
**In order to arrive at pleasure in everything, you must seek pleasure in nothing.
In order to arrive at possessing everything, you must seek to possess nothing.
In order to arrive at being everything, you must seek to be nothing.
In order to arrive at knowing everything, you must seek to know nothing.
In order to arrive at that in which you find no pleasure, you must go by a way in which there is no pleasure
In order to arrive at that which you do not know, you must go by a way you do not know.
In order to arrive at that which you do not possess, you must go by a way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not. **
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St John of the Cross ***Ascent of Mount Carmel ***(1.xiii.11-12)

Only when we feel deprived of everything can we fully appreciate our nothingness without God. 🙂
 
tonyrey said:
You may well be experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul which is a sign of spiritual progress:

St John of the Cross ***Ascent of Mount Carmel ***(1.xiii.11-12)

Only when we feel deprived of everything can we fully appreciate our nothingness without God. 🙂
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An absolutely outstanding book/spiritual journey (It’s hard to pigeon-hole) that I too would highly recommend.
 
tonyrey said:
You may well be experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul which is a sign of spiritual progress:

St John of the Cross ***Ascent of Mount Carmel ***(1.xiii.11-12)

Only when we feel deprived of everything can we fully appreciate our nothingness without God. 🙂

In my native language we have an expression which translated sounds like “you hit nut into the wall…” ( to crack it open).
Dear Tony you hit the nut into the wall… The dark night of the soul is nothing like you say.
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Ion said:
In my native language we have an expression which translated sounds like “you hit nut into the wall…” ( to crack it open).
Dear Tony you hit the nut into the wall… The dark night of the soul is nothing like you say.
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You need to justify your claim… 🙂
 
An Absurdist would concede the point, but recognize the absurdity and, like Sisyphus pushing his boulder, be content with it.
 
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