Weekend News

How to deal with an existential crisis

I've been through plenty of "crises" in my life.

One of the most significant was during my military service. Another was at the end of my twenties, around my career. And one keeps surfacing in recent years — the existential crisis, a phenomenon characteristic of modern societies.

What's an existential crisis?

At the symptom level: depression, anxiety, lack of meaning, confusion, no desire to take on the day ahead.

Why would we reach a state like that? Life is really beautiful (let's set world wars aside for a moment).

The reason is simple — and a little complex.

Most people do what they're told to do. And that's how it goes their whole life. From the moment they're born, through their parents, the various education systems, and so on. Or alternatively — what other people do / what society expects.

Instead of what?

Instead of doing what they actually want…

Over the years, the will muscle weakens against a parade of stories, thoughts, events, and justifications.

Then what do we do? We try to bridge the gap. The gap between what's expected of us and what we actually want.

How do we bridge it?

• Money — work, entrepreneurship, business, shopping, accumulating possessions
• Pleasure — entertainment, hobbies, restaurants, skydiving, surfing
• Numbing the senses — sugar, alcohol, drugs, psychedelics, medications, ADHD meds, stimulants, antidepressants (which can make the situation worse)

Another path: psychological therapy — usually psychoanalytic, where you express distress and the therapist talks to you about your life or childhood.

But usually, when a person suffers, they don't examine the foundations. Because at their core they're a byproduct of other people's desires and expectations.

We're all like this on some level.

If you did what others expected of you, or what you saw society demanded, and you of course wanted to be like the rest of the tribe — it means you're not realizing your soul's desires, or the deep desires of the unique personality you were born with. Those usually showed up as an interest in childhood.

Kids want to be firefighters or musicians and end up programmers. Neither is better or worse. It's just as valuable if you wanted to be a programmer and ended up a firefighter.

But over the years, most people give up on their deep desires.

So existential frustration arises when we live without purpose.

What's purposelessness? Let's simplify it as existential emptiness — a sense of lack of meaning. When a person doesn't have a "why" (a reason to live), they struggle to bear the "how" (daily suffering and difficulty).

How does a person find purpose?

He observes.

• A person feels emptiness, frustration, depression, or anxiety
• If he doesn't ignore these feelings, he understands they're a longing for a life of meaning
• You understand it's time to search for your life's purpose (at this point in time)
• When it comes, you decide whether to accept the calling — what came up in your desires — or reject it, because you're afraid of the consequences (= change)
• The moment you're in a life state of discovering passion, it helps overcome obstacles and mental pain

Finding passion at one stage doesn't mean the search ends. The soul probably won't settle for one passion. The soul wants adventures — it doesn't like stability.

That doesn't mean changing jobs every year. It can be a new hobby, having another child, moving countries, starting a business, or anything else that piques your curiosity.

So the search for purpose is an ongoing driving force in life.

In many cases, when crises surface, a person who chooses to go to therapy goes to modern Western therapy — a psychologist or psychiatrist.

In psychoanalysis, a person has to tell the therapist things that aren't pleasant to tell. But often what the person really needs is to hear things that aren't pleasant to hear.

Things like — that he's been giving up on himself — or — that he's been in victimhood without noticing, for too long.

"Why don't you commit suicide?"

That's a question Viktor Frankl would ask his patients. It was a question that helped people understand why they wanted to stay alive — or find reasons to live.

It pushed the patient to consciously discover his life's purpose. That's how he helped patients sever the mental cords binding them to their past.

Psychoanalysis in general is a not-very-clear event in which you:

• Look at the past
• Analyze neuroses
• Try to find pleasure
• Focus on psychology
• Analyze the source of conflicts
• There's no connection to faith
• And it can be very victim-oriented

In contrast, in unconventional therapeutic approaches you:

• Look at the future
• Search for and find purpose and meaning
• It can include a spiritual dimension
• It's often tied to faith
• You're forced to take responsibility
• You're occupied with finding meaning

There are a few people who hold a very important place in the study of the inner world. I'm strongly connected to the approaches of Viktor Frankl and Adler.

They believed:

• A person must take responsibility for his life (most people are victims of their feelings and life circumstances)
• A person must find meaning — through connection to divinity or through meaningful work (my interpretation: the goal is to distance yourself from society's dictates about what "meaningful work" is)
• A person needs a positive, supportive community — not a group of people to drink alcohol with at a bar and gossip

So my question is — in this time, or any time:

• Is your energy being invested in the right places?
• In faith, in good company, in taking responsibility?
• Are you taking action to improve?
• Are you using this period to find meaning and direction?
• Are you channeling these war years to sort the chaos in your inner and outer life?

And above all — are you doing what you actually want? In your personal life? Professional? Romantic?

Are your choices yours, or compliance with cultural rules invented by others?

Something to think about.

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I'll close on a lighter, more positive note.

In our culture people are obsessed with titles.

• Important to mom that her son be a doctor
• Important to the wife that her husband be a lawyer
• Important to dad that his son be a successful professor

But shouldn't it be important to them that he just be — happy?

People have all the money, titles, medals, followers, and status. But what's it worth if deep down they're living without purpose?

Want to find meaning in a meaningless world?

• Start practicing meditation
• Start writing
• Build a routine not based on the outside, but on personal care and finding purpose

A meditation course, self-discovery, development — in other words, the Tools for Change course — will help you start the journey.

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