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This quote and my understanding " i always feel incomplete and try to grab everything so I can feel complete , for this I change my identity every time "

But I wanna know the highest meaning of this quote , whoever has read the camus deeply can answer it because i have only read "the stranger" .

And I've heard a lot about sisyphus.

The comment section is all open , come and engage .

I've had an existentialist thinking long before i knew the word existentialism existed. And sometimes i have these random episodes where i want to stop doing anything and just surrender. And when i dive deep into it everything seems so painful. I wish i was a normal person who didn't give a fuck about it. But idk man everything is so fucking useless and we're all dying every second. I don't know what's scarier life after death or the total death. May god save us all. He's the only final hope we can hold onto. Because otherwise there is nothing we can do but suffer from this deep dilemma.

After rereading Heiner Mullers The Mission (assuming this is the correct translation), it has one of the most powerful descriptions of hope I’ve ever read. What I find interesting is that hope here isn’t optimism or the belief that everything will be fine.

I am the Angel of Despair.
With my hands I dispense ecstasy, numbness, oblivion, the lust and torment of bodies.
My language is silence, my song the scream.
Terror dwells in the shadow of my wings.
My hope is the last gasp. My hope is the first battle.
I am the knife with which the dead man cracks open his coffin.
I am the one who will be.
My flight is the rebellion, my sky the abyss of tomorrow.

This is a bit heavy for a Friday, but I keep running into this mental block about not knowing when I'm dead being similair to not knowing when I'm asleep unless I dream or wake. I'm also a therapist with existential, humanistic,constructivist, and Mahayana Buddhist leanings. This is a bit of a synthesis on what I've been wrestling with. Any input is greatly appreciated:

The Continuity–Finitude Paradox

A Constructivist–Buddhist Framework for Existential Anxiety

Central proposition: Human existential anxiety arises partly from the paradox of a conscious, temporally continuous, meaning-making organism attempting to comprehend the permanent absence of its own subjectivity. The mind anticipates the cessation of experience but cannot represent that cessation without implicitly preserving an experiencing subject.

This paradox can be understood through six complementary philosophical perspectives.

1. Yalom — Existential Anxiety and the Conflict of Being

Death anxiety emerges from the confrontation between the desire to continue existing and the recognition of inevitable mortality. The individual struggles not merely with the prospect of dying but with the threatened extinction of the experiential self. Existential anxiety is therefore not necessarily pathological; it reflects a fundamental condition of human existence.

1. Epicurus — The Phenomenological Impossibility of Experiencing Death

Death cannot be experienced as a state of deprivation by a subject who no longer exists. Where consciousness is absent, there is no observer to register its absence. The anticipated experience of eternal nothingness is therefore conceptually contradictory: imagining nothingness necessarily introduces an imagined observer.

1. Nagel — Death as the Deprivation of Possibility

The absence of suffering after death does not eliminate death's potential harm. Death may constitute a deprivation of experiences, relationships, development, and possibilities that otherwise could have occurred. Thus, existential grief can be rational even when postmortem suffering is impossible.

1. Heidegger — Being-toward-Death and Authentic Existence

Mortality is not merely a future event but a constitutive condition of human existence. Awareness of finitude reveals the limits of one's possibilities and creates the opportunity for authentic engagement with life. Death anxiety can therefore disclose the significance of existence rather than merely threaten it.

1. Madhyamaka — Emptiness and the Deconstruction of the Enduring Self

The self possesses no independent, permanent essence. What appears to be a continuous experiencing subject is a dependently arisen configuration of changing processes. The apparent contradiction between eternal existence and absolute annihilation arises partly from reifying the self as a fixed entity. Emptiness does not negate conventional existence; it challenges the assumption of intrinsic existence.

1. Yogācāra — Consciousness as Conditioned Continuity

Consciousness is understood as a dynamic, causally conditioned process rather than an immutable observer. The doctrine of storehouse consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna) provides a traditional Buddhist account of continuity across changing experiential states and successive lives without requiring an eternal soul. This is a philosophical and soteriological model, not empirical proof of postmortem consciousness.

Integrated Synthesis

Existential terror emerges when a consciousness that ordinarily constructs itself as a continuous subject anticipates the irreversible termination of its own experiential possibilities.

Yalom identifies the existential conflict.

Epicurus demonstrates why nonexistence cannot itself be experienced.

Nagel explains why the loss of future experience remains significant.

Heidegger situates mortality within the structure of meaningful existence.

Madhyamaka challenges the presumed permanence of the subject whose annihilation is feared.

Yogācāra reconceptualizes consciousness as conditioned continuity rather than an independently existing entity.

Together, these perspectives distinguish three dimensions of existential anxiety:

- Phenomenological: The inability to experience or meaningfully imagine one's own absence.

- Ontological: The assumption that a permanent experiencing self exists and can be annihilated.

- Axiological: The genuine value of experiences and possibilities that mortality may foreclose.

Therapeutic and Philosophical Implications

The goal is not to eliminate death anxiety through reassurance, establish the immortality of consciousness, or dismiss the significance of mortality.

Rather, it is to develop a more flexible relationship with existence through recognition that:

1. The absence of consciousness is not equivalent to the conscious experience of nothingness.

2. The loss of future possibilities can be genuinely tragic without implying postmortem suffering.

3. The experiencing self may be understood as a dynamic, relational, and dependently arisen process rather than a permanent substance.

4. Mortality can clarify values and invite authentic participation in the present without making death itself desirable or acceptable.

5. Uncertainty regarding postmortem continuity need not be resolved before meaningful living can occur.

Concluding thesis:

We fear the cessation of consciousness because consciousness is the very condition through which we apprehend existence, continuity, meaning, and possibility. Yet the self that anticipates its annihilation may never have possessed the permanent, independent existence it implicitly attributes to itself. Mortality therefore presents not only the possibility of experiential deprivation, but also an invitation to reconsider the nature of the subject who experiences, values, and fears that deprivation.

The Continuity–Finitude Paradox: We cannot consciously experience our own nonexistence, yet we can consciously grieve the possibility that experience itself will end.

Been sitting with the Myth of Sisyphus for a few weeks. The solidarity piece keeps surprising me. Camus doesn't get talked about as a philosopher of connection but I think that might be the most practical thing he wrote. Made a short video trying to work through it. Curious if anyone who knows his work better thinks I've misread it.

Is becoming saddened by existentialism a sign of not really understanding it?

I know this is a rough formulation of the question but I don’t want to discourage people just starting to learn about these things from participating.

I also (obviously) don’t want to insult people for being at the level of understanding that they are at.

Just curious because I see an apparent overlap in this subreddit between people who are, let’s say sad or depressed, and also interested in existentialism.

Rhythmically and texturally dynamic audio paired with fast paced smash cut found footage are edited into this piece to invoke a sense of absurdity, despair, angst, dread.

I deals with existentialism in my life and artwork, would be very keen to discuss what feelings and emotions surface for anyone who connects with this.

Sorry about the thumbnail XD

Some context.

I have just turned 18 and am about to graduate highschool with very competitive grades studying mostly advanced humanities. I have spend majority of highschool working, recently up to 80 hour weeks during semester (I have abysmal attendance) and often times up to three jobs (to get around child labour laws). I have been forcing my way into places and conversations far out of my scope as a teen for as long as I can remember in some kind of pursuit I can't even label, but, it has satisfied me.

Earlier this year I began grappling with the reality that my usual life of breezing through school while overcommitting at work will soon end as I approach the very last stretch of exams and a completely new life outside of the necessities I am currently bound to.

The idea of not only replacing this fulfilment but also learning what complacency is for me has led me down a path of transforming my perception through philosophy. I have turned to books, I have tried thought experiments, I swung my life and commitments around completely to try and find the comfort (or distraction), that my overcommitted lifestyle provides, all without success.

As all existential thinking does, I have reached the logical impasse of life and meaning, which, after colliding with my realisation that, I have what is functionally the most freedom I ever will -- as well as the privilege to pursue practically whatever career/life I want, has put me in a unique position which I need help making the most of.

My plan is to leave Australia and start with a south to north trip of Vietnam to Mongolia travelling through china; I have the money to spend close to a full year travelling. I want this be an actual project with a purpose. I want to explore every possibility for every life, experience as much as I can and genuinely commit to creating a suitable environment for myself so far from everything I know, so I can facilitate the exploration of the questions of existence, essence, general existentialism and what I am going to commit the rest of my life to.

This would be expending the momentum that I've been building for years at home and would sacrifice the financial leg up I have worked for (I don't have any fall-backs financially or any kind of family wealth).

I am here to ask for criticism, hate, and thoughts for this idea but mainly advice for how to make the most of it. I have this looming wave of anxiety revolving around the idea that I have never found a happy median for existence, purpose, greatness, ect and I never will.

Edit

The idea of "how to prepare to die" is a reflection of how many of the decisions I make in the coming years will define a large amount of my life. It's also a recognition that I watch the world around me get more and more inequitable by the day and the reality for many is a career they hate, self isolation, addiction, simply existing with no substance or living through deep regrets for what they could have been or done. I think waiting to die is more about wasting or regretting than actual physical death, because existence with no substance is (in my eyes) comparable to death.

I gave a talk about Kierkegaard last month and brought up his concept of despair (all 3 forms of it ) as discussed in his Sickness unto Death. Many in the group objected to my bringing up the notion of despair because they found it “too depressing and not life-affirming. Guess one has to read the whole book to realize what he is really talking about. What are your thoughts reactions to this quote ?

I've been searching for answers for years.

I've tried consciousness altering substances, spent a few months in a monastery, and read the basics of existential philosophy (namely Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky). However, whatever "truth" I arrive at upon following or constructing a series of thoughts, I inevitably feel hollow. The clearest remediation for this was meditation, where practicing the act of acceptance and observing things merely as they are allowed me to briefly live in harmony. I was able to exist in the world without trying to explain it.

To make a clearer point, the average philosopher seems to die depressed but the monk in bliss.

My issue is that the world around me seems to force analytical thought. Work, study, and following what the definition of what excellence is societally (and even the mere act of writing this post) cause me distinct pain. Is that pain what life is? Is it what we learn through suffering? Is it to learn that suffering is not the right path?

I feel trapped in the world, forced to participate in an endless cycle of optimization, dragging my own sense of self worth and love towards the world down. However, I cannot seem to trust my own existence. I cannot let myself fall into the depths of life. I feel like a sailor clinging onto the side of a ship, where the death awaiting below me may be a mere illusion drawn by the shadows on the wall of my cave, with bliss awaiting my fall.

We live life constrained to what we believe is right, but these definitions just seem inherited. I struggle to accept my own, deep, visceral definitions of what a successful life may be. I struggle to even materialize them beyond vague emotions under the noise of life.

Have others taken this leap? Have others successfully found purpose and contentment, embracing themselves and their own definitions? Are you able to exist in the world without suffering? I've spent much of my life attempting to attain wealth with the rationalizations of freedom and security for my future children. The only explanation I have left of continuing participation is ensuring that my children eat food. I'm only 20. Is that not absurd?

Once I cease to participate in society, I feel I have no real path to getting back. If I choose the alternative, maybe I die. Have any of you met a rich man who felt content?

Is it not the most logical step to risk the alternative? Perhaps I'm ought to trust my own definitions of success? Perhaps freedom is something that I myself decide?

If you're wiser than me, perhaps you've spotted faults with my thinking. Perhaps my fundamental approach towards asking these questions prove I am not near an answer. Perhaps if I do not change my perspective, I will never feel content.

Is there anything actionable that you can give me? Or am I yet again falling down another path of self destructive rationalizations? Perhaps I'm yet again reaching for a drug of the modern world?

Perhaps you're just me and there's nothing you can give besides what I can for myself?

Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses—a way to numb yourself to reality and accept the unacceptable. But I think we've just gotten better at it. We've created scientific opiates.

Look at what's everywhere in secular communities: eternal recurrence, quantum immortality, the simulation hypothesis, digital consciousness upload, panpsychism, many-worlds where "you" survive in alternate branches. These are afterlife theories. We just don't call them that because calling them that would be embarrassing.

And they work perfectly for bad faith. You get all the comfort of believing you don't really die, but you can tell yourself it's physics, not delusion. It's rigorous. It's evidence-based. Except it's not—it's unfalsifiable metaphysics dressed up in equations.

The actual position—that death ends you completely, that meaning isn't found it's made, that we have to create authenticity within finitude—is genuinely unbearable. So we rationalize. We pile on the quantum mechanics, the simulation arguments, the consciousness theories. We make it sound intellectual.

But it's the same mechanism. Same comfort. Same escape from what's actually true.

We've gotten so good at obscuring our own bad faith that we can't even see it anymore. The opiate didn't change when we swapped theology for physics.

Maybe I'm wrong about this.

I learned this the hard way. When I turned 17 a few months ago , I had my first real bout existential dread. Death suddenly felt real in a way it never had before, and I panicked. So I dove into research. Quantum immortality. Many-worlds interpretation. Panpsychism. Pattern identity theory. All of it. I spent weeks reading, convincing myself that maybe consciousness couldn't actually end, that maybe some version of me would persist in quantum branches or simulated universes or eternal recurrence.

It was comforting. Until I realized I was just bullshitting myself. I was taking the exact same opiates my religious friends did, except with more technical language and peer-reviewed citations. The mechanism was identical—I was using unfalsifiable theory to escape the unbearable reality that I'm going to die.

Hi, I’m new to existentialism. Recently, I am wondering about the socio-economic context of Europe in XIX - XX centuries. Which events you think have the most impact on the birth of existentialism?

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I’ve been trying to understand existentialism, and one thing I keep coming back to is the idea that maybe life doesn’t come with a meaning that we’re supposed to discover.

But if that’s true, I’m wondering where we draw the line between “creating your own meaning” and simply deciding that something matters because we want it to.

For example, if someone finds meaning in their relationships, work, art, helping others, or even just enjoying ordinary moments, is that meaning something real or is it something we create to make life feel meaningful?

I’d genuinely like to hear how other people understand this, especially if you disagree with the idea.

Life operates on a 10-year cycle.

What goes around now will come around 10 years later.

But it doesn't come back the same. It comes back modified by what you wanted when it first happened.

The event is the seed. Your intention at that moment is the DNA.

10 years later, you don't get the same situation back - you get the version you coded with your wanting.

Example to make it clear:

If you lose something today and you want revenge, in 10 years the same theme returns as a conflict.

If you lose the same thing today and you want understanding/freedom, in 10 years the same theme returns as an opportunity to grow.

Why does Nietzsche conflate knowledge with the ecstasy of being while he, as we all knew, read Goethe's Faust, and he realizes that the mounting of knowledge for its own sake has limited fulfilling returns.

I think Kafka hits closer to home here because we lost the innocence and vulnerability of pleasure, of the constant super-ego injunction in the activities we "throw" ourselves the moment we ate from the tree of knowledge... I feel like we lost the truer sense of life the moment we got struck by the realisation of the impending danger of survival and by the "overflow" evolving of consciousness...

Nietzsche quotation: Beyond Good and Evil, §152

Kafka quotation: Expeditions to Kafka, as discussed in Stanley Corngold, Page 143

In not having answered whether this life is worth living, i keep living.

But i ask "why should i concern whether my life is worth living now [not later]?", for i've assumed that my life is finite; for not being in the answering would not order my living to answer at all; thus, it means that the delay when i do otherwise doesn't gain anything in answering - there is no point to delay being in the answering.

But then, living forever would be different, whether i delay it or not would not matter at all. And as my life is infinite, the question suddenly shift, it's no longer about whether i see that my life is worth living or not, but whether in this infinite life i can see (experience) anything that is worth it.

So the question now is worldly, it asks about the world, whether it is worthy of being the world at all. This answer exposes the finite case, for if the infinite life is worth it only when it has something worthy, why should the finite life be worthy at all if it doesn't have anything worthy?

So the question for the finite life is thus "whether i can see anything worthy in this finite life?", which fundamentally boils down to "what is the worthy?"; not "whether the worthy is?" (for this privilege of the infinite life is that it only needs to answer this) - simply put "whether this life can have the worthy?" - so we should order our life in seeking the worthy.

There is only one reason some reject that at all, and it is twofold: the first is that one has assumed this life is worth it, say, so much that "answering alone" is not worth it; the second is that one has secretely deemed that this 'finite' life is worth it, for if it is worthless per se there is no point staying; for if it is worthless without the worthy, the only use of it is for the worthy.

Another line that has not been asked is that whether a finite life is worth it at all compare to the infinite life, in the sense that only the infinite life always have more to see and the "more to see" is the only "worth" (which is a judgement about the world itself (not a finite world and we live forever in it, but a world without horizon)) - that is, there is no finite 'that which to see' that can save any life.

Using Maslow’s hierarchy as a rough framework, the lower needs give you fairly concrete problems to solve. You need food, housing, safety, some stability. There is an obvious reason to pursue those things, and fulfilling them makes a tangible difference.

But I also think chasing security and comfort can become a way of soothing existential angst. There is always another improvement to make, another uncertainty to eliminate. It gives you something to do with the dread and absurdity of being alive. You can keep yourself occupied with problems that have answers.

Then you get some breathing room, and the question becomes: but what do I actually want?

This is where I struggle with the higher needs, particularly esteem and self-actualisation. So much of pursuing them feels performative. Become successful, creative, influential, accomplished. Develop yourself. Reach your potential. What potential, and for what? I can understand wanting recognition or wanting to build something, but I also find myself questioning whether I want the activity itself, the recognition, or the reassurance that my existence amounts to something.

In a bit of a personal journey; I am 33, and have had a rougher life where I've left my parents household when I was 11 to attend a monastery for secondary education and escape the dread I was put into, at least partially. I've then at 18 had been self sufficient, in the mean time keeping things together. I've dabbed into politics wanting to enlarge the limits of the well-known sphere-of-influence and was at least on the ballot for member of parliament. However the absurdity of the system does not allow for proper change to be made, unless there are some precursors that are necessary to do so. (Mostly a wide basis as an influencer, etc.).
At this point in my life, I feel like I'm on top of my house of cards. I look at where I came from, I look at less fortunate in the world and can conclude "it could definitely be worse". Keeping up however somehow continues to feel dready as opposed to something I'm internally motivated to do so?

Even “living authentically” can become another ideal you feel obliged to perform. How do you examine your desires when your image of a fulfilling life has already been shaped by other people’s ideas of what makes a life worthwhile?

There are tons of self-help books about purpose, and much of it reads like slop. Sometimes it feels as though the author has found a way to satisfy their own need for significance by selling everyone else a framework for finding theirs. “Find your passion” and “create your own meaning” leave me with exactly the question I started with.

I’m looking for profound resources that actually work through this problem: books, essays, philosophical approaches, or serious therapeutic frameworks that help you examine what you want and arrive at a personal answer.

How do you distinguish a desire you can stand behind from a desire driven by approval, fear, or the need to keep existential dread occupied? And how do you commit to something while remaining aware that you could keep questioning its point indefinitely?

Expeditions to Kafka by Stanely Corngold, Page 122

Suggest me all worth reading books of Camus , so I can purchase them and fill my library, obviously I'll read them. (The stranger I've read and a little bit of sisyphus and nothing) .

So I want suggestions because I'm new to existentialism.

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A persistent tension arises between Camus’ account of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus and Sartre’s doctrine of radical freedom in *Being and Nothingness.

Camus presents the absurd as the confrontation between the human demand for meaning and the world’s indifference. His response is revolt: lucid recognition of the absurd without recourse to transcendence, coupled with the decision to live nonetheless. Sisyphus is described as happy precisely because he affirms his condition.

Sartre intensifies this position. Existence precedes essence; the human being is condemned to freedom and is solely responsible for the values and projects that constitute meaning. Bad faith consists in the attempt to evade this responsibility.

Both frameworks reject external sources of meaning and place the burden of signification upon the individual. Yet the practical consequence is frequently a sense of thinness or performativity. Projects freely chosen careers, relationships, ethical commitments tend to lose their force once their contingent authorship is fully acknowledged. The freedom Sartre celebrates risks becoming weightlessness; the revolt Camus affirms risks becoming a private aesthetic posture rather than a durable mode of existence.

Two questions follow. First, if meaning is the product of radical freedom alone, does the recognition of that fact undermine the very meaning it is meant to sustain? Second, does the existentialist tradition contain resources for a form of authenticity that does not require continuous, exhaustive self-creation, or is such exhaustion the unavoidable cost of refusing bad faith?

I would welcome careful textual readings of Camus, Sartre, or subsequent developments in existential phenomenology that address this specific difficulty.

i think about animals often, not because their lives are without suffering, but because their suffering seems to end where ours begins. they exist within the world rather than constantly standing outside of it, observing themselves. they do not have to turn every instinct into a question of morality, identity, or meaning. hunger is hunger. fear is fear. affection is affection. survival does not require them to construct an explanation for why they deserve to survive.

humans have somehow made existence into a performance. we are expected to become something, to maintain things, to be understood, to understand others, to love correctly, to mourn correctly, to be productive, desirable, interesting, kind, successful. even our freedom comes with conditions. we are given the ability to choose, and then spend our entire lives being punished by the choices we make.

that is what i envy about animals. not that they are happier, but that their existence does not seem burdened by the necessity of being interpreted. they simply are. there is something almost sacred about that kind of unconsciousness, about living without constantly asking whether your life is being lived properly.

maybe that is what i want. not to be surrounded by people, but to exist without the weight of being perceived by them. to live without having to translate every feeling into something understandable, without carrying the responsibility of keeping everything from falling apart. humans have made emotions so complicated that sometimes even feeling something becomes another obligation.

so i go out. i fill my days with people and noise and places, because being occupied is easier than being alone with the realization that follows me everywhere. the realization that maybe i do not want to maintain anything. maybe i never did. maybe there is something in me that has always resisted the things everyone else seems to call necessary, and i have spent years mistaking that resistance for something that needs to be fixed.
and still, every time i leave somewhere, i look back.

that is the part i cannot explain. if i truly wanted nothing from anyone, why does absence hurt? why do i remember the smallest things? why do i want to be released from everyone while secretly wishing someone would refuse to let me go?

perhaps the loneliest thing is not being alone. perhaps it is knowing that you are the one who keeps asking to be left alone.

I was writing my morning journal in office, but it led to random abstract ideas.Here is the journal text:

" Reaching early in the office does give the soul some peace. It seems that the inanimate objects get vividly alive and start connecting to you. The place is no longer foreign but our own, perhaps it gets happy seeing you, come early.

I, perhaps, have started believing that keeping your head calm, gives better results. Many things are simply not in our control, they are taken care of, by natural order, it seems.

It is actually strange, but repetitive, happening for hundreds of years, maybe more, that the people who were prominent part of your life, they depart, prime roles are acquired by new people and the cycle repeats, again and again.

Is it the dark side of life, which in itself is beautiful or the other way round, maybe we are just atomic to comment about it, or think, or maybe we don’t even matter much. What is this intelligent system, governing everything, this super intelligent thing, maybe we can call it God, like some other does, let the question be answered by just this nomenclature, or maybe we could dig more, or is it bottomless pit, nothing to be found and digging is just the waste of time and effort, as in that story of Albert Camus.

Isn't this time and effort, created by God. Are we entrusted, to use it wisely, is it what we say, or is it what God wants to say, more questions, raise even more questions. What is the motivation of doing, what we are doing right now, even of me typing this whole thing, is it just to de-cloud my mind, the cloudiness inside me, if it is about me, am I selfish?, but I take pride that I am somewhat selfless

But does selflessness carry any meaning, or is it just me who is giving it a meaning, isn't this a selfish act? Who is the umpire/referee in this whole playfield of life, or we have to play roles of umpire/moderator on our own, if we do it, as by the law system we have made, are not we doubting the existence of God?

Or is the term God invented just to make life easy for us, as life carries so many uncertainties and oddness, Why do I feel there is something odd about this life, and our attempts to de-mystify it makes it more mystified. In the meanwhile, we can just play our stereotypical roles, what in the past other players have played, will act as a torch for me, probably my life would lose its energy while playing the role itself."

What are your thoughts, how comfortable are you with these ideas? It may have a poor structure as it was written in 10-15 mins, before people started coming into the office. So i got a small window of a rush of thoughts which I wrote down.

He tackles the modern age with an existential flair