My nihilism is well-noted by those around me.  I am a firm believer that life is a cosmic accident and there is nothing intrinsically special about it.  I’ll be thirty soon, and my body will decline as it marches toward the feeble state that it will someday exist in.  The mind will slip and degrade as well, leaving the only faculty that separates us from rocks wounded and dying.  Among the living, we are infinitesimally forgettable and, eventually, among the dead we will be lost even further as moss and weathering tarnish our graves.  What in this life truly matters?  Give me a reason to care.  However, my inability – due to sociopathy and childhood abuse/neglect – to feel positive emotion with my day to day existence is the most damning contributor to my nihilism.  All that is left is logic, and it dictates that none of us are special at all.

I have spent the past month working on projects of mine.  I have complete ownership of them – as I do this blog – but I cannot associate any positive feelings with the fruit that those projects may produce.  For hundreds of hours, I poured my energy into them – never knowing exactly why I was doing so.  Any feeling of satisfaction is incredibly fleeting for me.  I may crack a smile for a brief second when another praises me for the many things that I have done in this life, but that smile quickly turns neutral once I realize that the only satisfaction had is through the brief adoration of another.  I, myself, hold no regard for what I have done or what I may do in life.  Whether I am giving presentations at academic conferences – which my undergraduate stint was full of – or licking stamps, the response is the same.  There is no emotion attached.  What does it matter that actions have value if I cannot feel it?  So fucking what?

This nihilism will certainly never leave me, and, I suppose, that I must carry on carrying on.  The alternative is to sit in my office chair and stare at the ceiling.  While the emotional response will always be the same, I realize that action is better than none – even if the action is of the remotest significance.  That which I cannot feel, I cannot appreciate.  That which I cannot appreciate has no value.  Give me a reason to care.