Maybe I shouldn’t be an evolutionary scientist. I finished Dr. Shlain’s book today, and found myself wrapped in existential terror. That needs to stop, pronto. The last time this happened to me was when I was nineteen years old, and I ended up pretty much mentally paralyzed for a couple of months and needed me some Prozac. It’s not healthy for the human brain to go into its own dark scary corners.
I need to entertain myself with laughs and love and to not feel like I don’t matter. I know my plight is common and typical, I know my plight is what has spawned religion, art, comedy. That doesn’t help me. Relaxation, softness, meditation, and purpose will help me.
How do atheists get through the day? Being an agnostic is hard enough for me, it seems. But I refuse to capitulate to western, patriarchal religion.
Wow this is so hard to type.
I want to live in the moment, in the present, and not concern myself with the distant future. I want to be like the other animals who live this way, but I know I can’t.
Sorry for all the babbling, I am having a very hard time and wish I hadn’t picked up this book now, no matter how interesting I may have found its first half.
oh, jane, Wish I had some useful advice. I was going to ask if you’d ever tried meditation – I have found it a good sort of centering thing when the existential angst hits me upside the head. It’s a human thing, though, you’re right.
hugs.
thanks sophie.
I just had a nice long talk with Brian, it really helped. My tummy still hurts though.
Mainly I was just scared that I would fall into the same well I fell into when I was 19.
Fwiw, there are lots of anti-depressants that are not as harsh as Prozac now, if you do feel yourself sliding into a hole. I would say (from a distance, YMMV, etc.) that if you are feeling seriously depressed like this and it goes on for any length of time, that it might be worth looking into some kind of medication because it sounds to me like a chemical imbalance. I mean as far as I can tell, your life is really good right now and (on paper, anyhow) you’re really happy?
I have had this happen to me, everything is going well and my mood inexplicably dips precipitously. It’s tempting to look for some “cause” in events (guests coming? existential angst?) but in my experience, it’s more likely something like a change in the amount of sunlight I’m getting or forgetting to take Zoloft.
Thanks Liz. I do feel better this morning… I think it really was the book I was reading, because I read the chapter on death while on the train and my mood just collapsed in that instant.
I hate to think it was chemical, especially considering that I am taking Accutane right now, which is alleged to cause depression and suicidal thoughts. For the record, I have never had a suicidal thought in my life — on the contrary.
Anyway, I have always been the type to think a lot, and think myself into corners. Last night Brian gave me some hope about the universe, if that makes sense. And this morning I am laughing and smiling again, whew.
I will keep an eye on it though.
How do atheists get through the day?
I’m not sure I understand this question. I mean, speaking as a longtime atheist, I’d be happy to answer it, but unless I know where it’s coming from, I’d be afraid of giving you a glib answer like “with remarkable ease”.
Also, as if I speak for all atheists. Haw.
Anyway.
Sorry, I just meant how do you live a “meaningful” “existence”, but I guess that is a silly thing to ask. I dunno.
I wrote that post when I was feeling pretty depressed. I feel a bit better now.
Sorry, I just meant how do you live a “meaningful” “existence”, but I guess that is a silly thing to ask. I dunno.
Not silly. I see your point.
I’d really love to read this book after having read all your posts about it, especially because it’s just been in the last year or so that I feel I’ve been really able to think about these things rationally. To be able to look at life without the filter of years of religious programming is such an enormous relief to me that those throat-clenching, “what-if-I’m-wrong” moments of existential terror are few and far between. Even the idea of living a life that is fairly meaningless in the overall scheme of things, of being just another animal in a millenia-long chain of animals doing what they do and then dying, is not horribly depressing to me, probably because it’s a vast improvement on the threat of burning eternally.
As usual I’m not content with how I’m expressing this, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.
I’m really glad you’re feeling better.
I didn’t even think of that angle, since I grew up in a religion-free household.
And I was sitting here thinking Christians had it easy! Heh. Forgot about the whole “hell” thing.
Brian reminded me last night of something I can believe in — that if in fact there is a force that creates life–and why not–that it is merely the energy we see all around us, the energy that drives cells to divide and atoms to move around. Who knows where that comes from? I like questions that can’t be answered.
He also told me stories of spooky psychic things he has experienced, like the time his sister answered a question out loud that he had just asked himself in his head. Another unexplainable.
Like the time I dreamed a man I didn’t know had been run over by a truck in a parking lot, and woke to learn that a friend of Kevin’s (a man I didn’t know) had been run over by a truck in a parking lot…
Brian reminded me last night of something I can believe in — that if in fact there is a force that creates life–and why not–that it is merely the energy we see all around us, the energy that drives cells to divide and atoms to move around. Who knows where that comes from? I like questions that can’t be answered.
This has been my theory for a long time. It’s every bit as plausible as a Magic Big Guy in the Sky, to me, and considerably less oppressive.
considerably less oppressive
I definitely believe that Nature is neutral and has no judgement nor any opinion on the events in the universe. Chaos.
Brian also had a dream of his grandfather telling him he would need to help his grandmother out now — and awoke to the phone call that his grandfather had just died. Eeeeee. The Force is strong in his family.
Me, I dreamed that Johnny Cash had died, and awoke to the radio telling me the same.
Yeah, that’s rough. I try to live like I”m the superstar of my own little movie. 😉
“The purpose of life, is a life of purpose.” – by someone I don’t remember.
I think, therefore, I am.
diy anti-depression
Omega-3s. They help both Jamie and I control the manic nutties. You eat fish – get it from there, or I put ground flax seeds on yogurt and in smoothies. You can also get pills of flax oil or fish oil at trader joe’s. Flax seed oil can be used in salad dressing, too, you just can’t get it hot/cook with it or it loses its beneficial properties. The Omega-3s are essential for brain function in regulating depression, anger and lots of stuff. Jamie has a whole book on it, I just know that it helps me.
I don’t want to get all holier-than-whoever here, and I realize this may be the wrong thing to say, but I’m not sure I understand how finding something beyond agnosticism is necessarily equal to “capitulating to Western patriarchal religion.â€
The world is full of good and beautiful things. There’s kindness and passion and creativity and the nearly physical need to provoke laughter in others. There’s music that makes the hairs on your arms stand on end. There are old Monty Python bits you haven’t heard in so long they make you laugh again because you’d forgotten them. There’s the way the moon looks that tells you it will be unseasonably warm tomorrow (yay!) There’s the way the ocean and the top of a baby’s head and pumpkin pie smell. As infinitely bad as things can be, that only means that there’s also an infinite potential for things to get better. I’m not saying that I necessarily have such an all-encompassing joy in the presence of Life every single day of mine, but there are moments, I tell you what. And I don’t think you have to be an Evangelical Christian to embrace the Thing Out There that meant those things to be, whatever it is, just saying. Make of that what you will (if anything).
And for whatever it’s worth, whether and how you “make a meaningful life” isn’t necessarily even tied up in any of that, I don’t think. It’s so funny, I was just re-watching “O Brother” over the weekend, and there’s that wonderful bit at the end, that underwater sequence in which the whole theme of the movie (life, its tribulations, the search for answers, the search for “meaning”) floats by in symbolic form, and the truth is, it’s all there and its pretty straightforward. The hardest part is sometimes just getting over the idea that there has to be something “more.” You’ve got the improvement/perfection of self, you’ve got art, you’ve got self-expression, you’ve got the need to leave something behind and leave things a little better when you go. What more could you want?
I know. I’m being pig-headed and simplistic. But it’s at least somewhere to start.
Fear not
There is a purpose to life: to grow creatively into all you can and to be joined with the “creative primordial life force” from whence you were created originally. That which gives life is love, and it desires you to become fully who you can be. Keep learning and loving and caring. Love, Mom