There’s so much doom on social media right now. The environment is collapsing. The economy will crash. Civil rights are ending. Democracy is dead.

What keeps you going? Why do you still get up and go do what needs to be done when the world seems to be ending around us?

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    31·
    5 days ago

    That at any time I want, I can opt out.

    I don’t have to stay here and put up with the bullshit if I don’t want to.

    That’s also a possibility where I could do something useful by taking someone else out with me, if I can manage to get it done.

    You have no idea how freeing it is to be okay with death. When you cease fearing it and look at it as a welcome friend, everything changes.

    Now it is important to realize that this is not a desire to die. It’s simply accepting that death is inevitable, and that it is possible to choose when and how I die, if that’s something that seems useful. Life isn’t inherently sacred, there’s no special glory in not dying, there’s no particular benefit to sticking around other than more of the same that’s already happened.

    This means that every day is a choice. It’s something I own. I have alternatives. We all do, but I’m aware of that fact in a way that makes even the truly horrible much less impressive.

    Again, this is entirely different from wanting to off myself, it isn’t depression. It’s just the way I see things.

    • beliquititious@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      5 days ago

      Hunter S. Thompson carried a revolver on him for most of his adult life for that exact reason.

      … He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn’t know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don’t know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that’s OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that’s even better. If you wonder if he’s gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to—and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too—and Peacocks …

      — Some friend of Thompson’s after his death whose name I forget and am too lazy to look up (I have the quote unattributed in my notes on Thompson). But it’s quoted on Thompson’s Wikipedia if you’re not as lazy, lol.

        • beliquititious@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          5 days ago

          Are you familiar with Project Semicolon? It’s an anti-suicide thing and they use the semicolon because it is unnecessary and using it is a choice by the author that there sentence could end, but they have chosen to continue. Your top level comment has very similar vibes to some of the things that the group advocates.

          The founder did eventually decide to end their story and they kind of faded out, but the message is a good one.

          I agree with you about the power accepting your own mortality grants. All human stories end in death, pretending there is any other option is delusional.

          • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
            4·
            5 days ago

            Dude. You are such a fucking prick. Intentionally picking out something that’s damn near tangential to the point, then hyper focusing on it just to try and fuck with someone that wasn’t talking to you in the first place.

            Bugger off