Why is life so unfulfilling?

Question

I work 5 days a week. I have a car (a rather nice one). I have great room mates. I have an awesome relationship with all my family.

And yet, none of it matters. I work at a job I hate. My car needs shocks. My license expired, and I need $3,000 to pay off fines before I can get my license back, and my car on the road. I don't know how to talk to people anymore. I still feel like a stranger around my family.

I get up, and wonder why I couldn't just sleep for eternity. I can't help but think that suicide couldn't be any worse. Don't get the wrong impression. I'm not going to kill myself. But the idea does have its appeal.

What am I missing? Is it romance? Does the fact that a guy with my not-so-pleasant looks can't get a date have anything to do with it? Is it the fact that I can't seem to feel strongly about anything, anymore? What causes that? Why do all my emotions feel filtered and abstract?

Is this the normal procedure? Is it like this for everyone?

Any insights you could offer would be nice.

Answer 1

I don't like working too. But when i am i treat it like a game instead of work. A game that if i mess up it's game over xD

The secret to a happy life is to forget the petty stuff

Now for your romance. I read somewhere that what women look for in men is not looks but rather something deeper. I have many friends who are not your typical ricky martin but they have great personalities and many girlfriends with it. Be confident about yourself.

You may be right. When you don't have something or someone very important to you that you treasure with your life, then you wouldn't feel that much alive at all. You need to love. It may not be someone, it can be something like a very nice car you would sell your soul to get it. Start looking.

Answer 2

the reason why modern life is so unfulfilling is because the environment in which it occurs has no centre, our lives now take place or occur on the periphery, for that is now the centre.  all we do is forge ahead paying taxes which sustain a system that causes unhappiness and apathy; there is no escape from this virus because everywhere is the same, nothing is new anymore and nobody cares.  we have lost the glow of being unique.

Answer 3

Life is fulfilling if you try to make it so.

Answer 4

You will find that people and things in this world are never satisfying, they will always fail you and fail to fulfill you in the way you need to be fulfilled as a human. Only your creator can do that, and that's God. He made you to need to Him because He will NOT fail you ever and He will always be fulfilling when He knows that nothing else will. So, start talkin to Him about everything.

Answer 5

You have an awesome relationship with your family. You still feel like a stranger around your family,

You don't know how to talk to people any more..

Nothing's working any more.

Religion's not done the trick.

And you feel so depressed that you think you might as well be dead anyway.

These appear to be the salient facts.

Lemme think.

Well, you can't say, "Oh, I'll just pop out and have a romance, that might perk me up".

However. You've got to do something that you hate. You've got to do things - take action - force yourself to...I don't know...take up a hobby.. something.. exercise

Because, believe me, depression can turn into real illness if you let it happen. And I don't mean psychological illness.

I don't know why you feel the way you do but i'll tell you about me. The thing is, you might have a whole lot of unlucky things happening to you right now but they mightn't be the problem. Someone who's cheerful and altogether might have a heap of misfortune too, but then he would be able to, somehow, rise above it. You haven't been able to.

About me.

I went to the doctor.

He took tests and found that I had a terribly low iron count 9in my blood, if you follow) and my Vitamin D was not impressive either.

I was anaemic. Well, there are a great many people on this planet who are. I must say, it was rather deflating to find that I was hardly one-in-a-million. And extremely difficult to accept. I kept saying "but you just don't understand - you couldn't possibly understand".

Now I told my niece what the doctor said, complaining that he wasn't taking me seriously. Well, she said, her mother (my sister) took her to two doctors the year she did Year 11 (I don't know what the level is called where you live - I live in Melbourne, Australia - maybe the first year of college in America - well, Lucy was seventeen, anyway) because she was stressed and depressed and totally unlike herself. She thought that nobody could possibly feel the way she did.

The third doctor that my sister found did, indeed, know exactly how she felt.  Lucy said, the doctor was a no-nonsense doctor. He said he saw dozens of students on the verge of breakdown, stressed, chronic fatigue, anaemia, suicidal, depressed in all sorts of ways, suffering from symptoms of lethargy and apathy  and not bothering to eat - you name it .  Whatever his advice was, it worked because there sat my niece, a smiling first year uni. law student as balanced and confident as they come. What Lucy was trying to say was - there is nothing special about depression. It happens. It happens to heaps of people.

Back to me. Well, in the end I had to go to hospital and have a litre of red blood pumped into me for the anaemia.

The iron deficiency meant eating lots of red meat and green leafy vegies.

The Vitamin D meant lots more sunshine and Vitamin D tablets.

And exercise. You've heard the expression "pumping iron", haven't you? Exercise is important to get red blood cells moving and stop that sluggish feeling.

Now, deficiency in Vitamin D does not cause depression. It generally results in cancer and skin disorders (I told you that depression could lead to "real" illness, didn't I)  but the fact is, depressed people often just don' bother to go out in the sun and be active. Which leads to quite a lot of other things going wrong with their bodies. Deficiency in Vitamin B6 does, however cause depression. If you want sparkle in your life, you need to eat your breakfast cereal and green leafy vegies.

I still hate exercising . And I still barely give myself enough sunshine. And i don't eat a proper breakfast nearly as often as I should

But i know perfectly well that if I ever get depressed again, I could have done something about it myself. So I make an effort.

No one likes being told to exercise or eat properly or - amazingly - sit in the sun. If  all those students that my niece's doctor told her about were like me, he must have heard dozens of people say "you don't understand - I've got something drastically wrong with me psychologically; you're not taking me seriously - there must be something more to it than that".

Believe me, there isn't. You can sit in a church all day - or  a meeting place for atheists or commies or whoever - but it won't do you a particle of good if you only give yourself half an hour's sunshine in the day.

You can slave at a computer or a supermarket check-out all day but you must have some form of exercise as well - It doesn't matter what.

And take five minutes. Take as many breaks as you can in the course of the day.

Let's see. I've  told you of a couple of things I practically dare you to do: exercise, sunshine, and proper diet. You'll hate the very thought of them if you're like I was - but they are the very things that will save you.

And the other advice you'll hate is this. Get a life. Force yourself to take up a hobby or an interest or something. Once you get in the way of it, not only will you possibly find yourself  interesting - but - who knows? you might find that other people do too - girls, for instance.

Cheer up chicken!

Answer 6

What you need to do is to count your blessings and these in themselves make our lives worthwhile and pleasurable. I never owned a car (although I did have motorcycles). Luckily my work is satisfying, but when it was not I changed it.



How can you have "an awesome relationship" with your family yet feel "a stranger around them"? I think you are putting a pessimistic face of what is not a very serious condition. Think of the many poorer and less well-off folks than yourself, and try to communicate more with those you love.  

Answer 7

life is what you make it

Answer 8

More power to you for not listening to all these people who are trying to preach to you.   God or Allah or Buddha or whatever faith works for some people, doesn't work for others.  Not everyone needs religion to have a fulfilling life.

As for your unhappiness, it looks like a combination of different things that are just plain depressing when you go through them all at once.  Money and relationships are two of the most important things we depend on for our livelihood and happiness, and you don't seem to be having much luck with either right now.

Is this normal?

Yes, at some point most people go through ruts where one thing after another goes wrong and everything just seems to suck from the moment you wake up til the moment you go to bed.  

But the good news is that all these things are temporary.  Its these times of crappiness that make the times of happiness all the more enjoyable.  And believe me, the happiness will come.  Just be patient and keep living and working towards your goals and it will get better.

Try something different.   A little variety can add a little spice to a sour life.  Go for a walk, get a new book, change your haircut, try talking to someone you'd never thought you'd talk to.

Good luck.

Answer 9

Okay...no religion, no b*****t.......maybe all your missing is doing something you really want to do. Maybe all your missing is taking time to find wonder?

I used to feel like that...that everything was just one useless round of days. What helped me was to set myself some tasks that had nothing what-so-ever to do with the things I did everyday. I set out to learn something new everyday...even something as stupidly simple as saying hello in a different language. I set out to take a walk in the country, the mountains, on the beach, and really look, with all my sneses, at what was around me. Know what happened? I suddenly found that there were so many things I hadn't ever noticed before...smells, like honeysuckle when its damp with dew, and colors, like the amazing maroon in an evening sky right before the sun goes down. Once I realized that my days weren't what I wanted them to be, that I was wasting my tiem, I began to make small changes, and the humdrum blues went away.

They come back, from tiem to time...can't escape them when everyone and everything around you is pushing for the "more,more,more" mentality...but then I purposely go out and do not a blasted thing, and get my equilibrium back again.

Maybe you need to just slow down, take stock, and see what really matters. Be yourself, no matter what...if you can't get along with family, back off, let them do the trying, or not. Just be true to you, to your own self, and things will get different.....not better...just different. Thats the key, don't look for better, more fulfilling...look for different. and yes, even if we don;t admit it, its like that for everyone. Doubt...well, its natural. :)

Answer 10

Being a theist is not fulfilling.  Just knowing salvation exists, God exists...

The only way to getting on a path to knowing God (which is fulfillment)

is to be truly born again.

Answer 11

The feeling will probably go away after a good nights sleep or a blue sky holiday. Being tired makes your feel bad about anything good. Just don't get tricked by your biochemical inbalance to believing this feeling. So go see a doctor about the insomnia.  

Answer 12

Change your behavior, and your

life will change.  

Pay attention to what's important

in life, and things will fall into place.

A fact of life:  A license is

needed to drive.  So, you

get it re-newed.  One less

headache.  You address

each issue.

Don't wait. Handle the

issues before they

depress you.

Life will be easier, less

complicated.

Answer 13

I dont see the reason why you posted this question in the Philosophy section.So it is your own life and you can take it anywhere.When expectations are very high you dont tend to mix with anyone below that standard.I think that is your real problem.