can A life be wasted?

[emily1890]

like properly wasted

Can you get to the end of your life and think something along the lines of wow, what a waste
That is how I feel right now. I am feeling my life has been wasted and I have nothing to show for it

 

[Teal]

No. Even if you feel a waste who are you to say how much you mean or if you have brought happiness to someone else’s life; even if only in a way which seems insignificant to you.

There’s never anything to show for it. Possessions, achievements, peers, your feelings, your memories - none of this equates to your worth. Nobody is to judge or measure your worth; not even yourself.

 

[Friday]

CAN one get to the end of their life & believe it wasted? Certainly.

Whether or not that’s objectively true? Shrug. I don’t know if that matters, so much, as the person who has lived that life’s beliefs about it.

Does one have to? No. But it’s an incrediably common phenomenon…

(forming the backbone of midlife crisis, empty nesting, & the sudden switch that often happens if a person survive the severe depression & “suicide months” post retirement -about 6mo after retirement a person is as much at risk for suicide as traumatized teens, combat vets, & bereaved parents- it is an incrediably volatile time if there isn’t pre-existing passion & purpose.)

…and that’s just the normal-human thing.

Adding in trauma & PTSD?

It’s -expected is the wrong word?- even more common for people to hit hard limits, despair, hard transitions, changing belief systems, etc.

 

[Muttly]

It's a feeling and a powerful one. I think the key thing is recognizing it's a feeling. Life is a continuum. What if you decide your life is a waste and moments later you are out crossing the street and grab some child out of the road before the kid gets hit by a car? That's a dramatic example, but the point is you don't know what your future holds. Ten years ago, I could have never predicted I have the life I have now. Twenty years ago, I was convinced I'd end up killing myself either intentionally or unintentionally through self-destruction and lack of self-care.

And it sucks. I remember when I was at the worst of my depression. When I was so suicidal. And the idea of keeping going, for a day that seemed impossibly distant when things would be better. It didn't seem fair to ask me to keep going. It didn't seem worth it to keep going. I'm really glad I did. What you feel now isn't permanent. I know that might mean much.

 

[Weemie]

I've had to come to terms with the fact that objectively speaking, we simply do not have the answer to this question. It's one of those "Imponderable Questions" of Buddhism. What does it all mean? "In the grand scheme of things, the grand scheme of things doesn't matter." In the grand scheme of things, the universe will either undergo heat death or expand infinitely beyond the capacity to sustain life and crunch in on itself. In the grand scheme of things, everything you've ever conceived of, heard about, known and loved? Will cease to exist.

And we don't have the power, as human beings, to know what "that all means." So we have to choose, and decide, what is meaningful and important to us. Whether there's a spiritual component to it? I choose to believe that there is. I am Jewish, so I believe in God. I think God is an NHI subject to the ultimate "laws of the universe" as anything else. We just don't know what those laws actually fully are, and cannot understand things like superposition, quantum entanglement, electron reversion, etc.

At the end of the day, I don't have the capacity to know what the grand sum total of my life is. I don't know how many other people's lives I've impacted, for good or ill. I don't know how many people I've saved, and how many people I've killed. In 100,000 years, all of those people will be dead regardless - and so will I. Everything I've ever done will be long lost in the annals of history, whether I'm a tyrant or a saint or a nothing.

So I choose to do as much good as I can, because I can. Because I've decided that entropy is chaotic, and chaos is an impingement on the ability for us to live our lives as they currently are. Am I a good person? Am I a bad person? I don't think I'm either. I think I've taken good and bad actions. And some day it may come that I will be judged for those actions, hopefully by a being that is compassionate and wise. And I'll accept that, if I still have free will at that time. (If not, it won't much matter).

Personally, I choose not to believe that any human life lived in the pursuit of wellbeing is wasted. There are humans who waste their lives, by being harmful and causing suffering without any balance. But doing nothing? Isn't the same thing as a harmful action. I do nothing all day every day, and I've come to really enjoy it. My life isn't a waste, because I spend all day playing videogames and chatting to people online. That's a great life! For me, anyway.

 

[Sideways]

For me? No. A life being wasted implies there was something I was supposed to achieve.

There are no fixed goal posts. Only making the most of what I have, at any given time.

 

[Liljulz67]

like properly wasted

Can you get to the end of your life and think something along the lines of wow, what a waste
That is how I feel right now. I am feeling my life has been wasted and I have nothing to show for it

Hi,I know the feeling.know you are not alone.i feel this way alot.it helps to be Active for me.meaning I need to Paint,Excercise and help people like you to be noticed and know you are here with alot of people that struggle ,living with C PTSD.it is so hard to keep moving forward when there is so much turmoil in my head.i keep notes and letters of people that have written nice things to me.it helps to know I matter to some people. I matter to me it just takes alot to get to a place where you actually feel it.the work for me is never ending.I hope you know how common this feeling is.i was told by my doctor that this is Normal from all the Trauma I have been through.