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Notes -
How does one find purpose/meaning? That is, what gives you a "reason to get out of the bed in the morning"? Particularly when "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" seem particularly aimed your way.
(More specifically, with neither the usual standbys of "faith and family," and while being too anhedonic for hedonism?)
Edit: to put it more simply, how do I find a reason to keep struggling through another 30+ years of miserable, pointless, futile existence, rather than just skipping to the end?
Have you looked into John Vervaeke's series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis? He goes in depth into outlining the problem, and possible solutions. Although the latter half where he gets all into psychological concepts is skippable for sure.
Long story short - you have to have a lot of things to find purpose. You need a community, people around you that care about you and know you and will help you improve towards your purpose. You need some psychotechnology like prayer, meditation, et cetera to keep your mind focused. You also need to work on getting into the flow state, et cetera.
Idk man, it's not easy. I've been trying to find something like this myself, and it's a tough road but there are bright spots. Progress is possible.
One way to find purpose is to look at your life, and figure out where you've been hurt by other people or the world. What problems exist that made life harder for you? Then try to work on fixing those, to help others in the future who may be in your same situation. Just a thought.
Another thought would be to read great literature, like Dostoyevsky or Paradise Lost or Faust or whatever. Just check out some of the all time great works in the Western canon. A lot of them have themes around purpose and meaning in life, how to deal with it's loss and how to find it again.
Wishing you luck brother.
How do you get that?
Well, I've been through some cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical-behavioral therapy, both individual and group, so there's some "mindfulness" and "distress tolerance" exercises I have — though, as a schizophrenic, full meditation is strongly discouraged.
Most of those come down to either the existence of "faceless bureaucracies" that are, per Max Weber, an inevitable product of the "rationalization" that is itself a core part of the "Enlightenment" project; or else being born broken and defective.
Neither looks particularly fixable, and to the extent they could, there's nothing really for me to contribute. (For example, I'm not going to be whipping up a cure for autism in my apartment any time soon.)
Read Crime and Punishment back in high school, Paradise Lost in college.
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