Question for the Commentariat.

[silveradept]

Please answer the following two-parter, if you feel comfortable doing so.

(a) Have you successfully resolved the existential crisis of not only mortal life, but the likelihood that you and what you do will be essentially meaningless in the history of the cosmos?

(b) If so, please let me know your solution and its reasons. If not, please let me know where your difficulties are.

I'm still wrestling this one, and I have yet to find an acceptable answer in either religion or philosophy. A TARDIS and/or the ability to see what the post-life experience is like, remember it, return to life, and then evaluate by that standard is about as far as I've gotten for acceptable outcomes. I'm sure there has to be at least one that will click and fill the void of being able to conceptualize oneself in cosmic terms.

Comments

[silveradept]

They eventually grow into full-sized domokuns if they're left to gnaw long enough. And sometimes they drive us to make blog posts asking how other people handle it.

[adeliej]

There is something I just thought of - that being "things that give me comfort for this sort of thing". One of the major ones is reading poetry - recently quite a lot of Mary Oliver, specifically her "Wild Geese" and "When Death Comes" (I also love "Aunt Leaf", but that's not so much the existential question). It helps.