It is now the year 2015! I don't usually make any new years resolutions, but I'd like to start blogging more, as it really makes me feel at ease when I can get something off of my chest.
As some of you may know, I am a YouTube junkie. I can literally spend an entire day just watching peoples' vlogs. Does this fulfill my inherent nosiness? Does it let me live vicariously through someone else? I don't know, but it fills some kind of void in my life.
In the past 2 or 3 months, Lynn and I have been watching some British YouTubers called Dan and Phil. Much like with Netflix and TV series', when I find a YouTuber that I like, I will binge watch their entire channel within like...a week. Which I have done with both of these (main channels and second channels, sadly). Lynn and I (and obviously millions of other people) feel that we can really relate to these humans. They are "adults" trying to adult and really just fumbling around trying to get through life (that's not an insult, the struggle is real). Now, mainly what this post is supposed to be about is something that Danisnotonfire has opened my eyes to that actually has a name, that I have been experiencing for years.
The Existential Crisis (cue dramatic music)
Dan can explain this way better than I can (so go click that link and watch his video).
Basically, an existential crisis is when you begin questioning the meaning of your existence, the universe, and the purpose of it all. I really don't want to make this religious (because I am not a religious person), so please, put away your Bibles or Torah or other religious manuscript, we can save that for another day.
As I think Dan has mentioned in another video, people tend to think that an existential crisis is the same thing as a "mid-life" or "quarter-life" crisis. You know, that time after you graduate college with your (insert study) degree and wonder what you're supposed to do and if you've studied the right thing and how am I going to get a job? Not that.
Or how about when your life is halfway over and you have achieved nothing and don't have the money to see the world and feel satisfied before you die? Not that either.
An existential crisis is much more broad and it's not something that everyone thinks about (until now, terribly sorry). It's very easy to get sucked into a downward spiral of "what is the meaning of human life" and not know how to get out of it, because there is no, and never will be, a concrete answer. People have their opinions, religious things, and "just to be happy!" and 42, but that doesn't satisfy the gaping void in my consciousness.
From a scientific perspective, we are just a stepping stone in the evolution of a superior race that will some day walk (or hover?) somewhere in the universe. I can see that I could be somewhat satisfied with this, but it is pretty depressing. It makes me think of a quote from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. The one where Gus says that he fears oblivion and Hazel Grace says:
"There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does."
This is very real to me, and invariably throws me into a black hole of "me and my entire species will be dead some day and we will have achieved nothing because the universe probably will have disappeared from existence." Thoughts like these really make it hard to function properly. I've had people tell me "stop being so emo." Let's think about that for a second...the term "emo" comes from the word emotional. Why yes, I am an emotional human being, just like everyone else, but I choose to express my thoughts, while some people choose to ignore the inevitability of death and that our short human lives are pointless. Okay this is getting too long. Go watch Dan's video and let me know what you think about oblivion and the void and the meaning of our existence.
Yes, Dan, I think that ignorance really is bliss.
x Christa
P.S. Here is a recent picture of me and Lynn..."the cat whiskers come from within."
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