Existential Crisis

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I think going through existential crisis sometimes is actually good. It makes me question what I am doing with my life. It makes me completely uncomfortable and literally kicks me in my butt to drive me out of my comfort zone. Yes, I get complacent following the same routine again and again or worse, get totally disoriented and try to do too many things at a given time. 

When I question my entire existence and the meaninglessness of doing anything in life, it creates a void, a vacuum that sucks the entire life force within, churning out a black hole that keeps pulling me towards a dark core. If I lose myself at that instance, I am gone forever, trapped inside the vicious cycle of questions, answers, known, unknown, whys, whats and what nots. 

So, just before the boundary of the whirlwind, I pause and look beyond the obvious. It is obvious, isn't it? Life doesn't have any meaning. We fill it with small purposes to make our life livable, to give some meaning to our existence. We are obsessed with our lives. We believe we are unique, one-of-a-kind. We don't see the bigger picture, and even if we do, we choose to ignore it. That's not something we want to comprehend. That's scary, because that's unknown. This human feeling is safer, it is known. 

Perhaps Scarlett Johansson summarised it best in the movie Lucy, "We've codified our existence to bring it down to human size, to make it comprehensible, we've created a scale so we can forget its unfathomable scale."

While all these sound philosophical and impressive, it doesn't help with the core questions, "How do I live then, how do I resolve the inner conflicts?"

I start simply by accepting the fact as is - Life doesn't have any purpose. However, that doesn't mean I do not live or do not work or not be good. I am born human, so let me act human. While discussing this with Dr. Kshama Metre, an amazingly compassionate human being, she had told me, "Doesn't matter, just keep doing the good work." I believe I will turn that into my life’s talisman :)

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