the grind of existence

Unknown said:

what is there to live for

I asked myself the same things when I was in my early 20s - the adult world was expensive, complicated and unfriendly so it was hard to find things to make it worth while.

In the short term I found myself learning mindfulness and looking for the little things each day to find a reason to go a bif further each time.

At the time I worked in a warehouse of a supermarket that was made of dark corregated metal with no air conditioning (ie absurdly hot in the summer and freezing in the winter) and my job was to offload lorries of deliveries and move them internally to their staging places each day.

It was really hard work, physically uncomfortable (before H&S laws about working temp ranges) and mostly me on my own moving several hundred metal cages of goods around.

I even fund myself looking forward to taking a break to drink water just for the relief of stopping and quenching my thirst. Then it was mealtimes to look forward to (packed lunch I made earlier) and eventually going home (5 mile bicicle ride) - just finding one achievable thing to look forward to was all that got me through the worst of the days.

Later on when I found a partner then I could look forward to meeting at weekends, when I got a car I could look forward to going places too - basically building up things with time and effort.

Forget what you are being told by companies that want your money and look for things that mean something to you. Maybe it is cooking / baking, getting fit, helping a charity etc Try to think about these things in a positive way and look forward to them and you will soon find it is enough to live for.

In my case I never had any of those experiences and I resented everything and everyone.  Now I'm just running out the clock until my body decides to call it quits.  My generation (millennials) was led along the garden path until we were unceremoniously dumped into adulthood without a plan.

As for me I was held back, infantilised, underestimated and assumed to just go along and be happy.  Now I'm 36, still living under my parents, unemployable, regularly having self destructive ideation despite past medication and counselling and no social life.  I'm thinking of going out after my parents both pass away.

None of this is the fault of gen xers who learned to be happy with their lot and view life through rose tinted glasses, no offence.

Unknown said:

None of this is the fault of gen xers who learned to be happy with their lot and view life through rose tinted glasses, no offence.

I don't think we were happy with out lot, just that we developed survival techniques which is why we are still alive today to talk about them.

You have the power to make the changes for yourself if you choose to, to be willing to endure the harshness of your situation in order to make time to find the better path for you and to try to find the things worth living for.

You have to want it though - this is often where I have seen missing in those who fell by the wayside through my life.

Only you can make the difference in the end.

Unknown said:

None of this is the fault of gen xers who learned to be happy with their lot and view life through rose tinted glasses, no offence.

I don't think we were happy with out lot, just that we developed survival techniques which is why we are still alive today to talk about them.

You have the power to make the changes for yourself if you choose to, to be willing to endure the harshness of your situation in order to make time to find the better path for you and to try to find the things worth living for.

You have to want it though - this is often where I have seen missing in those who fell by the wayside through my life.

Only you can make the difference in the end.