How do you get the will to continue living knowing the meaninglessness of it all?
I’ve been struggling with this contradiction lately. I feel like I’ve intellectually accepted nihilism: no objective meaning, no cosmic purpose, no “destiny” waiting for any of us. We live, suffer, die, and the universe moves on, and there isn’t really much we can do about it. Sucks but seems to just be how the world is.
What I’m struggling with is this: once you've internalized that, where does the motivation to keep living even come from?
I’m not necessarily talking about suicide… although I have contemplated it. But I eventually came to this realization: death is inevitable anyway. We all must die, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do to escape it. So whether I kill myself today, tomorrow, or die naturally decades from now, the outcome is the same. I’ll still be dead forever. Nonexistence is unavoidable.
Honestly, that’s part of why suicide stopped making sense to me. If death is already guaranteed, what’s the point in rushing toward it? I have eternity to not exist. This tiny window of existence is the only thing I’ll ever experience before returning to permanent nothingness, so I might as well experience it while it lasts.
But now I’m left with another problem. If suicide is mostly off the table, how do you actually maintain the energy to participate in life when everything feels fundamentally empty underneath?
And people say things like “make your own meaning,” but that answer has never satisfied me. If I know I’m inventing that meaning myself, how am I supposed to take it seriously? It feels less like meaning and more like a coping mechanism. A story we tell ourselves so we can function and justify clinging to a pointless existence.
So what keeps you going? How do you actually get the will to continue living knowing how pointless it all is? Do you just lean into temporary pleasures and distractions? Is that all there is to this existence? Distractions? Is there some point where nihilism becomes freeing instead of paralyzing? Or is it always just something you learn to live with?