I want to live, a journey to and through nhilism

By Rahel Tariku

Three years ago if you had asked me, what I was living for, I had a clear cut answer. Something I was passionate about, that kept me going every single morning and made me hope for a better day. If you asked me , what if your reason to live no longer became enough or true, I would have said I'd simply wish to die. Because what is the point of living for nothing when eventually nothing matters? Why face life when your existence or inexistence is pointless? Yes, your closed ones will be sad but one day they will die too and everything about your life will be forgotten. It’s all directionless wandering that strips you from all power and fuel you had for life. I know, it's nihilist of me but it’s true. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, the German scholastic period precursor to existentialism,

“…Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure of existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any ‘meaning’ in suffering, indeed in existence… it now seems as if there is no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power)

The Journey to and through Nihilism

The mistrust is devastating. It didn’t come like a gushing wind out of nowhere but a slowly disintegrating blow. It came from within, it came from experience, it came from exposure. At first it was a little voice in the head, like a tiny devil on your shoulder that you can shoo away. Then it becomes questions after questions with a lack of clarity, then comes the doubt which will shake the ground beneath you. Because this is petrifying for it to be a reality, you just let it stay only in your head, denying everything, at this point you are doing everything out of fear and not out of truth, you become the worst version of yourself. For me it was constant anxiety and several panic attacks whenever I see something in real life that validates or proves or supports what I want to leave in my head.

When it felt like I was standing on thin air, it is almost impossible to care about anything, NOTHING mattered anymore. I was merely existing with no frame of reference. The past was a lie and the future is aloof. Nobody to blame nobody to cry too, no zeal no will. Just you and your endless questions. You try everything to be stable and keep pushing but its all a quick fix, it only last for so long. And then I guess you get used to it. I know it makes no sense. But then again what does?

I’ve always wondered how people live there everyday life with absolutely no purpose. I supposed they all perhaps subconsciously or intentionally create their own reasons, a subjective truth that becomes sufficient for survival or a calculated reasoning that become truth because its logical to the majority. This is very bizarre to me that people are that much okay with trusting them selves for answers that seams to me a biger than life question. Some people embrace the nothingness, which is incomprehensible for me to right now. Either way people find peace in their minds still baring all the questions and that is astonishing to me. They keep finding happiness, they fight for justice, they love, they care and they want to share.

 I don’t know why but I don’t want to just simply die anymore, I don’t want to avoid my questions and live out of fear, I want to follow whatever the path in front of me takes me. I won’t let the dissonance in my head take over my whole life, I want to take each day at a time and slowly but surely grow in my own pace. I might fall in the above categories on ways of getting purpose but for now I don’t, but for some reason despite all that is going on up in my head, I don’t want to give in. I want to live.