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[madducks]

Or am I simply trying to kill myself with drugs and alcohol? If the world to me is just a sepulchre stuffed full of data and fact and all sense of right or wrong have fled from me and everything is free to be arranged into surprising but ultimately meaningless shapes and states is this because it is who I am or is it just suicide?

[Izabael DaJinn]

That's pretty much what modern life is, and your emotional response is well...healthy. You can easily construe it as a 'dark night of the soul.'

The thing that saves me in those moments is realizing when life has become "a sepulchre stuffed full of data and fact and all sense of right or wrong have fled" (which is a great way of putting it, btw) then that is the moment we can free ourselves.

How?

By realizing the only meaning life can have is that which we choose to give it ourselves. There really is nothing more than that. It's not about what gave menaing to our aunt, our uncle, our countries' forefathers, or our ancient neolithic ancestors.

Our life, our current life, here in a modern world especially where most of the "basics" are supplied, all we have to keep our sanity is to remember that WE DEFINE ourselves. Period. We define what life is. Each woman or man for her or his self.

This sounds so simple but how many people decide their own paradigm for living? Or do most people live in the grey shadow of old, worn out ideals and social mores?

We can even choose to give life "no meaning at all"--but I posit that is the only truly sorrowful act we CAN commit. Meaning is what gives us structure and hope and lights our days and transforms the passing ticks of eternity from something to be loathed into something entirely blissful and joyous.

Finding your meaning is often more about "letting go and feeling what you enjoy" rather than a striving for some ideal state. If the desire comes from a place of desperate striving then it was more likely implanted by the media, which enjoys infecting us with addictions rather than helping us learn to find genuine meaning in living life as human being.

True meaning lies in those things we truly love doing, no matter how "others" might judge it....even if it's something we haven't done in a long time. Even if we have to hunt back to our days as a child to figure out what it is... It's there....

*iza