If I may add 2cents: It sounds like you're potentially depressed, or just happen to be a nihilist.

This is not necessarily bad. It can, in fact, be a virtue. With true nihilism, comes true freedom to do anything. Right now happiness is the greatest unifying force in our society. Everyone has to be happy. It's a dictum you listen to from birth to death. Be happy. Acquire things. Do this, do that, give us money, spend spend, make more, spend more. It will make you happy. And you want to be happy because we all told you that happiness must be your ultimate goal in life.

Fuck that. There's no need to be happy. Do whatever you want.

As the great Keanu Reeves once said: "You need to be happy to live, I don't"

You are simply piercing through what the mystics called the Veil of Isis. Introspection will help you I feel, more than consensus reality or various manufactured illusions and delusions that those close to you cling to in order to distance themselves from the void, but really seek solace in the fact that the path that you are on is well-trodden and others have been there before you.

The fundamental problem is "desire", of any sort, which stems from the Ego. Individuals who, through circumstances or deliberate means, manage to chip away at the Ego, pretty much all go through this "dark night of the soul".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death

Have you read Nietzsche? His concept of the Übermensch is particularly useful I feel.

Also John C. Lilly and his concept of metaprogramming. If all that can be said to exist is the Void, then the first step to finding peace, is to give yourself fully to it. On this, the occultist Aleister Crowley used the concept of Babalon which exacts a heavy price (the blood of the adept, meaning his self-identity).

When that realization sets in and there is no fixed "I" there anymore, everything becomes easier.

One becomes what one imagines...

>I've had probably a dozen therapists over the years

Writing this as someone who went through SCUBA training (but never took the open water dive) and also went through an intensive private pilot training course (but never went on the check ride), I feel a sort of kinship here.

Have you tried CBT or REBT? (REBT has the word "rational" right in it).

The premise is that our thoughts can sometimes put unreasonable demands and pressure on us which results in nasty emotional consequence. You can give REBT a test drive via a few sample chapters from a reputable author here: http://threeminutetherapy.com/my-book-three-minute-therapy

Another useful book is: How to Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything: Yes Anything! https://www.amazon.com/Refuse-Yourself-Miserable-about-Anyth...

Then there's meditation. It's not all yoga pants and spiritual mumbo jumbo. I've described a simple method here: https://medium.com/@John_Chacho/engaging-the-senses-to-quiet...

These aren't magic solutions. My brain resists this stuff with ninja-like elusiveness, but when I remember to practice it, it does steady my outlook and behavior.

In short, the various CBT methods combined with meditation can turn the confrontation with the "yawning void of nothing" into a peaceful, sometimes even joyful experience.

I'm gonna be "that guy" and ask - have you tried psychedelics? If so, what was the experience like? I have no good advice to offer since clearly everyone else has that covered, but I am genuinely curious about how you're wired.

When things are hard, it's often because either a) it's new, or b) because we're trying the 'wrong' way.

When something is hard and you can't manage to get the desired result no matter how hard you try, consider that rather than to keep working 'hard', you just try something different.

I know you haven't (and couldn't, on this forum) encapsulated the breadth of all of the things you've tried to overcome this lack of meaning that you've been experiencing throughout your life. But, and please forgive me if I'm oversimplifying your search, it seems pretty clear that you've been looking in the wrong places. Trying something different doesn't necessarily mean trying a different activity, or finding a new thrill, or a new drug, or anything like that. Put simply, it means try doing something that you wouldn't otherwise do.

When you say that the people around you hate it, that's what I'm getting at when I say, 'Can you imagine what it's like being on the other side of you?' Are you giving the people close to you the access and information they need to help you? Do they know you need their care? Do they know what things they do that give you energy, and what things they do for you that are demotivating and de-energizing? Simply giving them access to 'where you're at' can do a lot to empower them to help you. You can't get through this alone. You need to do everything you can to let them know that you're working on it and that they can help.

When you say that 'everyone else seems fine', that's a symptom of the lack of authentic connections in your life. If you're like most of the people on this forum, it's possible you spend a likely unhealthy amount of time working. That makes it crucially important that you have some professional relationships that can help fuel you to do the best work you can do (for the sake of your own business, your own sanity, and just generally making the world a better place by being easy to work with), and to get through the business of being a human being within the constraints of our economy. I don't know what business you're in, but I would be shocked if you couldn't improve it by being better connected to the people you're working with.

Whatever is stopping you from improving those connections, whether it's introversion, a sense of superiority, or simply being a low-friction provider of a minimal interaction service, just be aware that there are steps that you can take to make those connections stronger. There is not nothing you can do.

The fact that happiness comes from the inside is so easily written off by so many people is a persistent and vexing concern. Think of how much you contain, honestly. Within you is all of the pain and all of the joy of every Russian novel, every bit of the dazzling, puzzling, frustrating and ecstatic complexity of every single film, poem, painting, song, etc, ever made. The degree of difference between you and me and every other human being is infinitesimally small if you zoom out just a little bit. So, if someone else is able to apply that idea that happiness originates from within, so can you. I hate myself for writing things that contrived, but it's true. For what it's worth, you may have to take someone at their word that they were able to build happiness just with what was contained within them. Trust it. It's true. Set aside the practical dilemma of working it out in steps that can be described to fit your life, and understand that it's possible.

You mention having a dozen therapists. That sucks to go through that many therapists and not find 'the one', but please keep searching. It's the same with mentors. The compounding problem of trying to attain happiness and to have massive amounts of real effort turn up little reward is a huge and understandably discouraging one.

Despite the absurd and self-aggrandizing length of this reply, I have no answers and no wisdom that couldn't be more succinctly expressed through common idioms. The only thing I can offer is my own experience, and to vouch for the experience of some people I know that were able to slough off the feeling of torpor and malaise that can set in when hopelessness comes easier than hope.

Your Rodney Dangerfield example is well appreciated. The best comedians give us the pain of the world wrapped in a bow. I have found that in my own life, I get both much happier, and also experience much more sadness and even depression as I open more and deeper connections with other people, and with the world at large. In general, you just feel more. That is one of the beautiful (and obvious) things about connecting with others... you get to feel more.

The 'road' that I mentioned sharing with you was probably a bit presumptuous on my part... the road that I was talking about was basically my own history of trying to obfuscate my needs and feelings with more-than-casual drug and alcohol use, believing that the reason 'things' weren't 'happening' had mostly to do with people/influences/circumstances/other factors outside my control, which led to blame and avoidance and some bad stuff that comes along with those things.

Your example comparing the accumulation of experiences/memories with saving Polaroids is concerning because, sure, collecting Polaroids is a bit boring if they're all the same picture, but ideally they shouldn't be. But anyway the analogy doesn't really work, because the important factor is not that they 'happened', but instead that they accumulate, which leads to deeper connections, new connections, etc.

Sorry in advance for the ridiculous length of this post.

I'm grappling with similar questions, and have been my entire adult life. It feels like an unending existential crisis. I think both your comment and the parent comment (which are both very thoughtful, btw) pose an interesting question: is 'happiness' a meaningful or worthwhile goal? For me, at the current moment, I think not. The notion of happiness seems almost incomprehensible to me, to be honest.

The way you've described your life reminds me of a book I've (partially) read: Mindfulness in Plain English. Even if you think Buddhism and meditation are a bunch of malarkey, the book itself is worth a read. What specifically comes to mind are parts where the author discusses why one should bother with meditation:

...you are human. And just because of the simple fact that you are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. All of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, you sit up, take stock, and realize your actual situation in life.

There you are, and you suddenly realize that you are spending your whole life just barely getting by. You keep up a good front. You manage to make ends meed somehow and look OK from the outside. But those periods of desperation, those times when you feel everything caving in on you, you keep those to yourself. You are a mess. And you know it. But you hide it beautifully. Meanwhile, way down under all that you just know there has got be some other way to live, some better way to look at the world, some way to touch life more fully...

...you suffer from the same malady that infects every human being. It is a monster in side all of us, and it has many arms: Chronic tension, lack of genuine compassion for others, including the people closest to you, feelings being blocked up, and emotional deadness. Many, many arms. None of us is entirely free from it. We may deny it. We try to suppress it. We build a whole culture around hiding from it, pretending it is not there, and distracting ourselves from it with goals and projects and status. But it never goes away. It is a constant undercurrent in every thought and every perception; a little wordless voice at the back of the head saying, "Not good enough yet"...

Maybe the Buddhists have got it right. Perhaps the more worthwhile goal is cultivating a clear and unbiased perception of reality. Honestly, I have no clue; just putting forward an alternative to consider if you haven't already. If you do figure it out, I'd love to know...

Here's a link to the book btw: http://www.budsas.org/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm

EDIT: reading firstworldman's sibling comment provoked another thought which may head off a semantic issue. Maybe 'happiness' is neither a meaningful nor meaningless objective; it's simply an ill-defined, subjective concept. So when people talk about 'attaining happiness', its possible what they mean by 'happiness' is objectively different to what other people think it is. From what I understand firstworldman to be saying, he has found 'authenticity of experiences and relationships' to be a worthwhile and attainable goal. Incidentally, this seems to square with Buddhist philosophy, which is largely concerned with attaining 'perception of authentic reality' (i.e. 'enlightenment').

In a finite physical universe, nothing has intrinsic meaning. The only meaning anything has, is the meaning that you attribute to that thing. Thus, anything that is meaningful to you, is the most meaningful thing in the universe.

No goal is better than any other, because there is no universally defined "better", everything just "is". Therefore, you are free to say that the goal you have chosen is better than any other, and you would be correct, because just by choosing it, you have changed the balance.

'Realize' is a strong claim, experiences may indeed be meaningless or they may not be. How could anyone ever prove one way or another? But if one could be convinced they were indeed meaningful, it might provide an avenue for happiness.

May I ask is it possible you desire something to desire?

This is exactly what I'm talking about. We are just biological organisms evolved over millions of years to simply continue the human race. Why would you expect to find meaning?

terryf has a fantastic comment, but what end are you talking about, death?

A good way of figuring out what you value is considering if you die tomorrow, why wouldn't you (assuming you aren't suicidal). If you really don't matter either way then why not just do the thing that feels good?

Could you elaborate? I'm in a place where stuff does not matter anymore (never did actually) and I try to focus on experiences. Is that path also a mistake?

Andrew, you're fine. I'm going to guess that you're American as America is the most happy-obsessed culture in the world in my experience.

Happiness as virtue is not universal, maybe you need some more time abroad. I know you said you visited 100 countries but visiting 100 countries and living in another country for many years is quite a different thing. Or maybe you just need different friends or perhaps a meditation practice, I don't know.

I'll leave you with this 2 minute video from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Interesting?": https://youtu.be/U88jj6PSD7w

One could look at it as a loss or lack of a sense - would incredibly tasty food seem all that worthwhile to someone with no taste buds? Does the fact that people can taste good food mean they will automatically become obese?

If you're talking about studies in psychology and why they perceive happiness as such, it's because they're not philosophers. They're merely trying to learn things about something that is actually important, even if not the full picture of what is important. Because that's what their method allows them to do effectively.

Could you please expand on the last paragraph? I think about happiness a lot lately, and it seems like you have some intetesting thoughts.

Reading this thread, and resonating with much of what you say, may I suggest maybe that it's not the meaning or a meaning, but simply the search for meaning itself (which I realise was the title of Viktor Frankl's book) that might offer some structure.

I don't know if it's our brain wiring, chemistry, experiences, psychological development path dependencies, or what, but I'm pretty convinced that human brains are pattern-seeking systems, and finding and establishing patterns, ordering our universes, is one fundamental drive.

It also turns out that that's what I've been directly and principally focusing on for the past few years, mostly because I can't not.

Several of the activities and compulsions you mentioned above strike me as behaviors which feed the brain's reward systems fairly directly (drugs, alcohol, sex, extreme activities), and your combat and other experiences may also affect that -- not judgement or anything, just mapping for me of "what does the brain seek, how does it work, how is it itself re-shaped by experiences?".

The advantage of taking a shortcut is to get to a destination faster. The advantage of taking the long way around, or exploring a space, is often to get a far stronger sense of the interconnections within that space. I thrive on connections, myself, so that has appeal.

No idea how this strikes you, but offered for consideration.

I really appreciate (and am very fascinated by) your extreme honesty in this thread.

I've read Camus twice. The first time I read The Stranger, I took away meaninglessness, in the sense that existentialism seemed true.

The second time, I nearly threw up (no, I wasn't reading Nausea :-D), but in the sense that I don't think I've ever felt anything was so absolutely evil and wrong, and existentialism false.

I can't explain this in a philosophical way, and it may be a delusional and biased opinion given my life experiences between the two readings, but I think observing intuitions does hint at universal meaning. Intuitions might be intellectual observations of objective truths no different, in principle, from observations of atoms, or reason itself.

I've nothing to offer except my own experience. I deconverted from a fundamentalist church and had to rebuild my life because I realized that external factors do not give meaning to it, the origin of something does not give it value, and the end of it all is the same.

I don't have much patience with myself getting into the same thought patterns. Perhaps this lack of patience is the must important skill I acquired.

I meant more in the sense that a lot of personality disorders involve a chronic sense of emptiness and identity disturbances.

See http://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/feel...

> So I don't worry about it too much.

That's nice. My fomo is seriously crippling my ability to move forward in life. Feels like I am currently stopped in my tracks out of fear that I would lose options.

I agree strongly that trying to diagnose people of the internet is unhelpful behavior. However, from the tone of Andrew's comments on this page, it would seem he is interested in improving the quality of his experience of life by seeking greater self understanding. I take the parent comment as merely the offering of yet another possibly helpful direction of inquiry for Andrew, and not an attempt to diagnose.

Do you play any sports?

Personally I find the pursuit of mastery in my chosen sport very meditative, and it also offers the right amount of social contact for me.

If you get along with your opponents or teammates, you can chat with them during the match, otherwise I just concentrate on my game and try to win every single point.

Even when I lose, I always have a list of things I've done well during the match and a list of things that I need to work on. And if you have some metrics by which you can see improvement, there's a sense of satisfaction that comes from seeing that improvement as well.

That's certainly equally valid. But my brief comment was meant to also be a humble suggestion of another place to look - another thing worth trying. It's a viewpoint that definitely seems to be in the minority in this forum, but it's an important one to consider. A couple more ideas worth considering: - Coming to a place of faith starts like everything; it begins with the desire to have faith. - Consider the possibility that reason and faith are not mutually exclusive, but actually complementary (just give that concept a chance before dismissing it - it has a very strong intellectual history)