Why are you alive?

I can't find a reason to be alive anymore, I've lived enough and at 28 I think life is pretty long and that I would rather end it. For me, life isn't easy and it's not worthy of living through hard work, not that I've a very hard life though.

So, I'm curious to see why people keep living, especially the people who face so much hardship only to remain alive. So, please share the answers of these question!

What makes you keep living?
What pushes you to do the hard work so that you can live another day?

Thanks

There are some answers on your other thread: http://www.alonelylife.com/showthread.php?tid=32209

Why/ How is life hard work dude? What kind of hard work? And how does that justify killing yourself?

Now I enjoy life so it's easy to keep living.

When I had no friends, couldn't seem to succeed at anything whether jobs, anything at all I felt like there was no hope to be what is termed successful and I would be a lonely, homeless individual forever and was frequently on the verge of suicide.
I tried to remember at that time that if I killed myself there would be a complete absence, if there was even one thing in the world that I liked or enjoyed then that outweighed complete lack of experience. As far as I'm concerned we only get one chance to experience all this - to snuff it out is such a ridiculously weighty decision to take that unless you're a 100% certain you should be choosing life and doing the necessary work to make it pleasant. I've based my values since on this.

To me anyone that e.g. goes to jump off a bridge and admires the view one last time is making the wrong decision to kill themselves unless the pain is literally constantly excrutiating the rest of the time, because you're giving up absolutley everything and for what? In aid of what? It's a stupid decision.

I started pulling myself out of feeling suicidal by appreciating little asthetic things i.e. a particular view or patterns in something and reminding myself that would be gone if I did it. Then I started thinking about activities I like doing and worked at them, expanded them some of them turning into hobbies/ near obsessions that I really enjoy and that in places have for instance made me able to travel, by amazing means, pretty much for free, to most places - something I would never have thought was possible. Over time I built up my confidence to interact with people (a little bit) more beginning by just saying hello to people in shops - now I have a few ppl I can count as friends and hugely enjoy those friendships.

Through building up my interests and to a lesser extent friends I found reasons to want to live, thus I need to survive comfortably so may as well try again in jobs, through lots of hard work I can now survive in some jobs just about and have gradually dragged myself up the career ladder to a point where I'm semi-comfortable at my ability to survive in the world of work.

I think deciding to give up absolutley everything in this world, everything you've ever known, absolutley anything that you find beautiful/ pleasurably and exchange it for complete absence is a petulant, utterly stupid and wasteful decision unless you have long standing clinical depression (even then its wrong yr just blinded) or a chronic condition that literally does make life constant agony/ hell on earth - life and experience is infinitely valuable. There are so many avenues you can take, if you are restricted in one way you can find joy and satisfaction in another if you work for it - I think it does take work to be happy though and enjoy things.

Now I'm pushed by possibilities to travel, to learn, to develop hobbies, by the thought of a spliff and a southpark when I get home from work, by people I know, people I might meet, by the thought of going for a walk tomorrow when hopefully the weather will be nice and the light really low/ clear in a nice place full of nature. Loadsa stuff. There are so many possibilities and beautiful things/ people to see and meet and life is much too short.

Sorry for the long slightly pompous reply, just wanted to try and get across how valuable I think life is just as raw experience and how it can be for someone who it might also considered a loss cause for. Think too many people commit suicide or talk about suicide on impulse without thinking about the totality of what they're throwing away - it's not just work or someone bullying you - u can always leave those situations.

Why is life hard work for you?

Because my parents did the... you know.

Seriously though, things always change and you will reach a point in which you can't believe you were considering this.

Hardships? do you live in Rwanda?

I learned no matter how pointless and lonely life may be, It's a gift worth cherishing. The small things go a long way for me.

I have no idea why I am alive. I am just waiting to one day die. That's prety much the point in life anyways.

My sister.

ordinaryDude said:

What makes you keep living?

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I'm kinda fond of my existence.

ordinaryDude said:

What pushes you to do the hard work so that you can live another day?

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The voices in my head tell me that I can buy a Volvo if I work really hard. But I'm holding out for a Tesla.

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Seriously though, I fear failure and I want to make my mark on society before I bite it, but time is running out. I feel like I'm a running Indiana Jones holding the Fertility Idol as the giant boulder chases me through the booby trapped chambers. If I slow down, I'll get squashed.
.

There are days when I really feel shitty and feel like there is really no reason for me to live or keep going and that I'd have nothing to lose. But then suicide isn't an option for me. Giving up isn't really an option for me either, I think. Life can be really tiring at times.. struggling and honeysuckle.. and seriously disheartening and heartbreaking.

ordinaryDude said:

What makes you keep living?

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The little things. Sometimes little things happen that just keep me going.. like a nice phone call with someone I enjoy talking to or a nice message from a friend.. simple things keep me going. They mean a lot to me.

ordinaryDude said:

What pushes you to do the hard work so that you can live another day?

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Wanting to be where I want to be. I know it's not going to just happen if I sit back and do nothing, so I work for it. It's not easy though, and for me, it's always so difficult to the point of impossible cos other factors come in and I end up not getting what I want in life and having to settle. But I still have that yearning so, that yearning for the life that I want to have makes me work hard for it.

Personally, i'm alive because i'm determined to better myself in anyway that I can. I'm a person who absolutely loves video games and spends most of my days playing them, but one day I thought to myself.. "What can I do to improve myself?" and from there I've done small things each day to just work towards being the person I want to be. Because no matter what, there's always an end game and i'm gonna be that guy I wanna be.

If that makes sense.

déjà vu

It's not up to me when my time is up. Trust me I tried, failed and moved on. And as far as what you work for, I like being alive. The longer I've lived the deeper my perspective grows, making what I previously thought I "knew" to now be reanalyzed, recategorized and processed in a new light.

Solivagant said:

There are some answers on your other thread: http://www.alonelylife.com/showthread.php?tid=32209

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Sorry....I forgot I made that thread before...really sorry to annoy you all with repeating similar threads!

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benj said:

Why is life hard work for you?

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Honestly, for me life isn't as hard as it is for many other millions, but look at war ragged countries, look at countries with ebola and whatnot, isn't life hard for them? I really don't understand how they keep on surviving, that's why I'm curious.

Just to live one day without any pain in your stomach, you have to eat at least twice a day, you have to earn that food, you need a house, some clothes if you want to remain civil and more clothes if it's cold.

Life has so many infinite requirements, it's not easy to live, is it?

because I love my life !

ordinaryDude said:

Solivagant said:

There are some answers on your other thread: http://www.alonelylife.com/showthread.php?tid=32209

Click to expand...

Sorry....I forgot I made that thread before...really sorry to annoy you all with repeating similar threads!

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benj said:

Why is life hard work for you?

Click to expand...

Honestly, for me life isn't as hard as it is for many other millions, but look at war ragged countries, look at countries with ebola and whatnot, isn't life hard for them? I really don't understand how they keep on surviving, that's why I'm curious.

Just to live one day without any pain in your stomach, you have to eat at least twice a day, you have to earn that food, you need a house, some clothes if you want to remain civil and more clothes if it's cold.

Life has so many infinite requirements, it's not easy to live, is it?

Click to expand...

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Eh, we all repeat ourselves at some point. I think I've done that a few times now.

See, the way I see it is like the requirements are a game. The hurdles we face are the challenges, and the rewards are beyond what any game could give.

I ask myself this everyday.
I really don't know.

My dear family and he.

Because I'm scared of possible reincarnation and I don't want to leave my mum to blame herself for my choices. Sad to say this but I'm not attached to anyone that much anymore so I don't think that I would be missed that much if I disappear someday.

Simple answer: survival instinct. Formerly, "my contemptible brute animal survival instinct," back when I wasted time raging against things I can't do anything about. I've tried to end my life in the past and have always been prevented from ending it by the idiotic animal inside me, whose silly fear of nonexistence overpowered my rational decision not to live. So I accepted some time ago that I am not strong enough to overcome that animal and have to endure being forced to remain alive as best I can.

Being forced to hang around has made me aware of many other ways in which humans express instinct and merely get pretentious about it. I believe that homo sapiens sapiens is driven predominantly by instinct and, in the case of most people, both thinking and intelligible emotions are just pretentious ways to fancy up that instinct and enable us to feel like we're superior--which is itself an instinct. The feeling is totally false because there is effectively no difference between a call center employee in his cubicle and a gorilla in his cage at the zoo. Both have essentially the same motives and ways of handling things. People are ruled by their moods and whims. Without having survived my suicide attempts I wouldn't have found myself in a position to observe that.

I'm alive because I know my existence has meaning for others, and I find meaning in helping people.

Today I was at the point of kicking walls and almost punching strangers, my city is all dug up and I was way late to where I was going.

Then I saw a homeless guy sitting with a squashed paper cup in his hands, crying. I reached in my pocket and gave him the change I had, and looked in his eyes and acknowledged him. There was a brief connection, and my problems no longer seemed to big or challenging.

If I wasn't in the world there would be one less person to do things like that. I try to help others, though I can't help everyone. Sometimes I love my life, sometimes it's a pain, but I find meaning by helping others, it can be done in so many little ways, there is always someone who needs help, even if it's just a little thing. Even if it's just acknowledging them.

I recall the famous doctor Patch Adams was suicidal in his early life, and then found himself by helping others, and also Victor Frankl, who survived the concentration camps, described how it was those who helped others who coped better, those who shared there last bit of bread with another who seemed to retain their dignity and meaning in the worst of situations.

I suppose it's just one answer to a question that could be interpreted in several ways, I'm alive because I'm a survivor, but I find meaning in helping others as best I can on this mysterious ride we call life.