## what’s the point of it all?
the meaning of life (or lack thereof)
Often times, we find ourselves mindlessly following a system, the groundwork of which society has neatly laid out for us. It is easy to get sucked in the cycle; birth → school → university → job → 🪦. This is a well-trodden path, easy to follow but lacking in surprises. Of course, it is perfectly fine to base your life on this route. We might even derive a sense of meaning and purpose from it.
Other times, however, you might take a step back and go…
“What’s the point of it all?”
What’s keeping you going? What’s the one thing standing between you and spiralling into total depression?
It might be hard to place your finger on what it really is, but the fault in this style of thinking is the fact that you are already operating under an assumption; The assumption here is that your life needs to have a purpose in order to be liveable. You weren’t sent to this world for anything. You are just one among the billions who were lucky enough to be born, lucky enough to have internet access, lucky enough to have the ability to think these thoughts. You are a tiny speck in the vast universe, a fleeting existence on a pale blue dot. Yet most of us seek meaning in our lives, whether it’s through religion, culture, or personal values. When we find flaws in these systems, we fall into a pattern of nihilistic thought that can become unhealthy if left unchecked. It’s like a glitch in the matrix, forcing us to question the very foundation of our reality.
First things first, embrace that there is no grand meaning that governs your life. The best way to think of life is merely as a collection of moments strung together by you.
Taking into account this definition, let's think of it as a YouTube channel, where every video is a day in your life.
Now, which YT channel are you more likely to enjoy watching? One that is filled with
a) awesome moments — you’re constantly getting out of your comfort zone, doing things that you like and not giving a sh*t about what people think, or
b) repetitive content — all you do is watch TV and fill yourself up with junk. you barely get out the house and all you do is talk about your eventual death (which you are, no doubt, speeding up by wasting your life)
=> I don’t know about you, but a) takes home the W for me.
Thinking of life this way is also a forcing function to make the most of every day to contribute better to your “Youtube channel”. It forces you to take ownership of your own life. I recently read about a university student who took this a step further by thinking of their college experience as a TV series, where every day was an episode. They would make sure to name it every day which pushed them to make the most of it.
At the same time, I can understand why all these may not help you remove yourself from a form of thinking that is so easy to fall into. In fact, I was in a deep existential slump for a period before I actually took any action for it (because why take action when you’re going to die anyway?). I had two choices, to do nothing and waste away my life… or to do something.
I chose the former; My days were a blur mindlessly scrolling through my feed and playing video games. I didn’t bother myself with deadlines or projects and just did nothing.
Despite all this, I was unhappy.
I was taking the passenger seat in my life, letting the world drive me by. You’d think that when someone rejects meaning and decides to do nothing, they’d actually feel liberated doing it. lol no.
After I had a particularly terrible experience of doing nothing, I decided to start forcing myself to do something. Here’s how I did that:
#1 removing myself from instant gratification
With the rise of social media, it can get a little too easy to fall into the trap of instant gratification. Every day I’d wake up and… scroll through reels, text, load up CSGO, scroll some more, text some more, repeat. Before I knew it, yet another day had passed and I went to bed only to restart the same cycle the next day. Going back to the YouTube channel analogy, that's not something I’d enjoy watching. Oh no, this is definitely the type of video I would scroll to the comment section and furiously type out a strongly worded attack on.
The first step to de-slumping (?) is to recognise that you have fallen into the clutches of instant gratification. This recognition came in the form of my mother; she pointed out my lack of progress and I couldn’t help but acknowledge it. After all, you can only improve if you realise that it’s leading you to unhappiness.
Despite this knowledge, we still gravitate towards this pattern of behaviour because it's the easy option. Figuring out what to do and actually doing it is WAY more difficult; why bother when you can just click an icon and watch cat memes all day?
To combat this, I decided to uninstall (and block websites — SelfControl is an amazing app for that) for a month and see how that turned out.
I went off the (social) grid: considering school was out, I was pretty much un-updated on the happenings in the lives of others except my closest friends. I also limited the time I spent on other sources of instant gratification.
Again, it might seem difficult but it definitely gives you space for much-needed reflection. It makes your head clearer and is definitely an important step to de-slumping.
#2 building momentum // crafting the perfect YT channel
Since social media, video games and other sources of instant gratification are no longer “instant”, you’ll likely feel drawn to other activities. You might feel intrinsically motivated to do other things and pursue your passions. I definitely was high on intrinsic motivation during this time.
I like to work fast. I make fast, impulsive decisions in every area of my life — be it randomly cutting my hair way too short or paying for an online course without much thought.
But of course, when creating a YouTube channel, you want to plan out your content. It's best to start out by asking yourself what type of things you are interested in (or even try out a bunch of things and see what you enjoy the most) and see how you can become better.
And then, do those things. Simple as that.
(ok maybe not that simple, but you get the idea)
For me, I had to force myself to start by doing random things I thought I might enjoy (and would contribute to my goals, like coding small webdev projects), but this gave me something very important: momentum. It made continuing these things easier.
While I did get back on socials later on, I built systems to limit my usage and make it more difficult for me to use it. For instance, look at this redirect I use in my browser whenever I try to use Instagram:
#3 getting that balance ⚖️
Continuously doing something I thought would make sense for my future (+ I enjoyed) helped me pave the way to pursuing my goals. This helped me become intentional about the content I consume (with regard to these goals).
I’d like to iterate that you don’t have to constantly do something. Having spaces of time where you simply exist and do nothing more is something you should definitely make sure to do to prevent burnout. Starting out by completely erasing social media from my life was just a step that helped me the best — you could try other methods like timing your usage depending on what works best for you.
Something really important to make sure you sustain and have balance in your activities is:
- Not doing work stuff and fun stuff in the same device/browser. My friend phrased this better than I could — “Division of space, but tech”
- NOT stressing too much about balance: trust me on this one, been there done that. If anything, it stunts your progress.
From personal experience, I’d say doing something is way more enjoyable than doing nothing. And as you saw, getting started is pretty simple.
Whenever you are plagued by the thought of “what's the point of it anyways?”, think about the YouTube channel of your life. Strive to make it colourful and lively over something people would fall asleep to. Again, what's the point of NOT doing things if it won’t matter in the end? This type of thinking, called optimistic nihilism, is the antidote to existential dread. Here is my favourite explanation of it:
On the flip side, it’s actually kind of motivating; what's stopping you from going to the streets and belting out the chorus of “That’s what makes you beautiful” with unbridled passion? Or asking out that one person you’ve had your eye on for a while? Or building a cool treehouse in your backyard? If you only got one shot at this, then make it worthwhile. Go ahead and make a list of things to do even; don’t deprive yourself of embracing every moment of your precious existence.
And if nothing else helps, live in the best way possible out of spite towards life itself 🙃 (10/10, would recommend)
Hey 👋, I’m Rania, a 16 y/o activator at the Knowledge Society. I’m a future of food researcher who focuses on acellular agriculture. Currently, I’m nerding out on using artificial intelligence in education. I’m always ready to learn, grow and inspire. I’d love to connect; reach out to me on any of my social media and let’s be friends!
