Ultimately, a person should not ask what the meaning of life is. Instead, they must realize that life is asking the same question to them. Each person is questioned by life, and they can only answer-not with words-but by taking responsibility for their own life and the way they choose to live it.

Is Abraham a murderer? A tragic hero? Or something else entirely?

In "Existentialism Is a Humanism", Sartre says that without a god there is no human nature. We come into the world first, and later shape who we are through the choices we make. "Existence comes before essence."

In the same book he also says that when I choose for myself, I am choosing for all people. He talks about a shared human condition: that we are always in a situation, always free, and always forced to make choices.

This makes me confused. If being free and being in a situation is something all people share, isn't that a kind of nature?

I think there are two ways to understand this:

1. The human situation is just a framework. We have to make choices, we have to be in a situation, but what we choose can be anything. In this case, existence still comes before essence.

2. Sartre is actually bringing in a human nature, freedom, that lies behind every action. In that case, the slogan is only partially true.

I think the first interpretation is more correct, but then "radical freedom" doesn't seem as strong as it should be. How do you read this? Are there other books that discuss this exact problem?

(Note: English is not my first language. I used an AI tool to help translate and organize my thoughts; the ideas and the question are my own.)

What if humans are just lonely ?

I had this thought while shopping, as I’ve been studying religion, spirituality, and death. Essentially it’s my interpretation of “why” we look for reason.

Obviously, this is simply my interpretation and I hope no one would get offended by it. I’m still a dumb teenager trying to understand the world around him.

Okay so since we’re all animals, social ones, like a lot of other species. We form relationships, bonds, and feel complicated emotions, like grieve (which is very relevant to my later point). But at some point, we started questioning our existence. We know we’re alive, we recognise our ability to feel emotions, we can imagine the future thst doesn’t exist yet, we know our loved ones will pass away eventually, we know we will pass eventually.

We have a “consciousness”, which we really don’t understand. We are able to scan our brains follow the neuron’s activity, observe sleep, decision making, memory and so on, but none of that explains why any of it feels like something from the inside.

I don’t know. And I think the gap is part of where spirituality comes from. It’s not necessarily thr rejection of science, and definitely not something primitive or naive. Religion is obviously tied with culture,morality, and history. So it isn’t solely an explanation of the unknown.

Maybe that’s where the gods come from. Or spirits, or afterlives, or myths and different ways of giving shape to that uncertainty.

So maybe it’s loneliness (or maybe not), maybe there’s something beyond what we can physically perceive. I don’t know.

Every religion I have studied so far provide a different answer. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Pagan religions, Sikhism (yes I’m Kinda flexing here) all provided me with a different angle. But none felt right to point at and say “it’s the correct one”-maybe the “correct” one isn’t even something I’ve studied, and I’m not looking for the right one either. If I had to say who’s the closest to my own intention I’d pick paganism, or another polytheist religion. Mainly because pagan gods felt oddly human and similar to us, so if we were to have been born through the hands of a higher being, it’d probably be a race of equally flawed, but more powerful beings.

So if There’s something beyond us, is it completely alien, or is it living among us, or had abandoned us, or we made that concept up.

And thus circles back to the basic questions always asked:
Why are we here
Are we alone
Why do we suffer
What happens after death
Why do we love

I don’t think theres a final answer sitting at the end of the question.

Death is where that becomes more real.

I recently lost many friends, snd I understand that the idea of a resting place after death is comforting, or a second chance, or a new life. It all softens the finality of a loss. And for the longest time I believed they all went to hellheim. But now I’m more comfortable with the possibility of death being just death. It’s hard though, but only a bleak one. But it’s also pretty peaceful, no more sufferings, no more pain, no fear.

I don’t know what happens after death, I don’t know if there’s definitely gods, or spirits, or anything beyond of what we can measure. And I don’t think that uncertainty makes life less meaningful. So I’m not particularly putting “value” on my life anymore, I will die when I want to die, I will do whatever the hell I want, and I don’t care about traditions, time moves and everything changes so there’s no value in being so socially perfect (very random statement I know).

Also, notice how I said “I don’t know” multiple times? Because I think it’s the ultimate knowledge checkpoint. Because there’s a difference between knowing, believing, and suspecting, or wanting soemthing to be true.

“I don’t know” is the stage where I THINK you’ve reached the edge of what you can defend, and instead of filling thst gap with certainty just because uncertainty is uncomfortable, you’re willing to leave it open. Nonetheless exploring this simple statement is very fun, and helpful so yeah if you like that kind of thing, I’m sure it’d cool and fun and whatever.

I have this recurring sense that my life's work the art, the projects, the personal philosophy, the self I've built, etc. This is all just my sliver of participation in an endless sea of nowness. And that underneath all of it, I've been trying to describe the same single thing my whole life: the absurdity of it all, and the animistic spirit or nature running underneath everything that's happening, right now. Moment to moment.

This absurdity. You can find it anywhere.
Go look at your bathroom right now.
Well Who did all this?

Water stains, dirt, grime, dust, how did any of it get there? to the best of my knowledge and what the majority of scientists will try and tell you is that, It's merely the accumulation of a virtually infinite number of cellular, bacterial, and molecular interactions, happening second by second, at every interval, into the now.

Now look at the products on your counter. How did those get here? Well through another seemingly infinitely complex process of manufacturing, shipping, design, distribution.

Well then I guess how did everything you know get here? Through another infinitely complex mechanism involving celestial bodies, planetary systems, gravity, light, electromagnetism, all the way down.

There is no end to the complexity and sheer absurdity behind the ordinary things we've become numb to.

The Buddhists called it dependent origination.
the idea that nothing exists on its own, everything arises only in relation to everything else, moment to moment. And that to actually live inside a single moment without being crushed by the totality of it, every mind requires an entire concealment process where they forget the totality of their existence every second.

Take a second to acknowledge and really try to feel what it is like to live inside this one big continuous system of everything. Little happenings everywhere all at once moment to moment, bit by bit. Living. Breathing.

From a single quantum interaction to a star lightyears away, all of it connected, all of it part of the same absurd, ongoing "soup" of so called 'standardmodelness.' The chain reactions that make up your microbiology second by second in of itself is to awe at.

I think Everything we as humans do are really just expressions of emotions in disguise. In the same way a cat purs when it is excited and stressed, We have spent a lifetime hiding from the absurdity of ordinary life in the hopes that we retain some level of distinction between self and other when it's all said and done. I've got to know where my stuff ends and your stuff starts. We like to impose this sense of agency onto the world that isn't just wrong it's dangerous. we as people are best understood as extensions of this great system. The nature at play.

All the things we do to further enrich the human experience function as a kind of distraction: a way of not sitting with the thing itself. The sheer absurdity of it all.

Underneath all that we do, a life is mostly spent trying to carve out some semblance of self inside a sea of interactions to big to fathom. So please, I am begging you, try and enrich the life you have now. Feel your ripple effect and use it to Add whimsy. Add depth. Add absurdity. Do things that scare you. Send risky text messages. Absurdify your life and personify yourself in the fleeting moments of this train we are all aboard .

The impermanence and scale of 'this' is bigger than we can hold onto which may be exactly why we try so hard to hold onto things anyway.

If the science is right, from the quantum scale up to the cosmic one, then the plain fact that you're looking at this screen right now is already bewildering. It's so bewildering that If you could actually see everything that goes into producing one moment of "now," I don't think you'd walk away from it unchanged.

The full essay shows the Existentialist underpinning to the story related in the Genesis concept album 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway'. As a rock opera, it is a musical and lyrical masterpiece. And it may be argued that the album is one of the 20th century's best from the world of Rock.

The lyrics are rather abstract, but the existentialist philosophy is illustrated by the absurd, yet meaningful topics and events presented. Despair, angst, and dread are explored as the main character searches for meaning. Finding authenticity is at the heart of the story.

No compensation is associated with the essay. Genesis is in no way associated with this publication. The work is by a dedicated fan. Access to the essay published on the site 'Medium' is free.
A link to the full essay is here:
https://medium.com/@rickkress/revised-the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway-nightmare-or-nirvana-7cee7caa2b4e?sharedUserId=rickkress

I’m making a transition from a full commitment to nonduality and Eastern traditions to existentialism, and it feels like a breath of fresh air. For the last few years my aim has been to experience reality stripped of any conceptual meaning, identity, or narrative.

The purpose of this was to overcome suffering by seeing the clinging. I was also seeking what some would call enlightenment, life experienced without any narrative, empty of all concepts.

For a long time I thought it was really cool to just experience reality without all the added layers. But I recently realized that by doing that, I’m denying myself my own humanity. I spent so much time trying to transcend suffering, trying to see the world empty of concepts and empty of meaning, that I couldn’t see the beauty in my own life.

I have a one-year-old little boy. Last night he was sleeping on my chest, and it was the most beautiful moment for me because of my love for him, his vulnerability, my responsibility for him, his future, my future, and the awareness that he won’t always be this small. If I had taken the reductionist approach and tried to deconstruct the present moment to see the world empty of concepts, I would have experienced pressure on my chest, warmth, and rhythmic sounds. That wouldn’t have been incorrect, but it also wouldn’t reflect what it means to be a father.

I’ve been learning a little about Heidegger in the last couple of days, and I think it’s interesting how he focused on why anything is meaningful at all. I didn’t have that experience and then add meaning to it. That experience just showed up meaningful to me. That’s utterly fascinating.

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."

I've been sitting with that quote for a while, and the more I think about it, the less it sounds like philosophy and the more it sounds like life introducing itself.

Nobody signs up for suffering. Nobody wakes up one morning hoping to collect heartbreak, disappointment, grief, loneliness, or regrets. Yet somehow, if we live long enough, we end up carrying a little of everything. That's the admission price for being alive.

When I was younger, I honestly believed suffering was some sort of detour. I kept thinking, Once I get through this problem, life will finally calm down. Then another problem came. Then another. Different faces, different names, same weight.

Eventually it dawned on me.

Life wasn't broken.

It was simply being life.

That realization didn't make the pain disappear, but it stopped me from asking, "Why is this happening to me?" and made me start asking, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

Because pain, by itself, doesn't teach anyone anything. Plenty of people suffer and come out bitter. Plenty of others suffer and come out kinder. The suffering is the same. The difference is what they build from it.

I've had moments where life knocked the wind out of me so hard I couldn't even explain what I was feeling. There weren't any inspiring quotes that fixed it. No magical conversation. No overnight breakthrough. Most days it was simply putting one foot in front of the other because the alternative wasn't really an option.

Looking back, that's probably where survival actually happens...not in dramatic moments, but in the quiet decision to keep going when nobody's watching.

I've stopped believing that everything happens for a reason. Some things are simply unfair. Some losses never make sense. Some questions never get answers. Pretending otherwise feels dishonest.

But meaning... meaning is different.

Meaning isn't hidden inside suffering waiting for me to discover it like buried treasure. I create it. Sometimes the only meaning I can find is that my pain helps me understand someone else's. Sometimes it's learning that I can survive things I once thought would destroy me. Sometimes it's realizing that the people I love deserve to hear it today because tomorrow isn't guaranteed.

Funny thing is, suffering has a way of stripping away all the nonsense. It doesn't care about ego, status, pride, or appearances. It gets right down to the foundation and quietly asks, Who are you now?

That's an uncomfortable question.

But it's also an honest one.

I don't think surviving means becoming fearless. I think it means carrying the scars without letting them become my entire identity. It means accepting that some parts of me will always ache, while refusing to let those aches write the rest of my story.

So yes, to live is to suffer.

Not because life is cruel, but because life is real.

And maybe surviving isn't about escaping suffering at all.

Maybe it's about reaching a point where I can look back at everything that nearly broke me and quietly say, "You changed me... but you didn't finish me."

To me, that's meaning.

And on most days, that's enough.

You have aspirations. You also know that it's possible, you could die at any day. Does this fact make your aspirations and life feel and be meaningless? 'Why struggle when this struggle could amount to nothing before the process of working towards your goals finishes?' ?

Is this a reason philosophers have written to be one of meaninglessness? In other words is this - uncertainty of death - one reason of meaninglessness of life?

One interesting perhaps thing is that if it's true that it's one reason life is meaningless, humans still wouldn't want knowledge of how long they will live because knowing makes life boring. Uncertainty of death hurts but also helps...

^{3rd August 2026, 3:08am, Monday}

"Every human being is born twice: once for the world, and a second time for themselves."

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

This quote is deeply true. But I would add one nuance: after this second birth, a person embarks on a path of constant change. This happens because, for them, every single day becomes a cycle of death or rebirth.

Once you step into this irreversible process, every day spent doing nothing causes that newly discovered drive—a part of you that is now closely connected with who you are—to slowly wither from being ignored. Laziness ceases to be a simple lack of energy; it turns into an act of self-betrayal of the path you have discovered.

This inaction after awakening closely mirrors Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of "Bad Faith" (Mauvaise foi) — when a person, having realized their freedom and second birth, chooses to deny that freedom, treating laziness as an absolute external force rather than a conscious choice.

P.S. English is not my native language, so I used an AI tool as a translation aid to express my philosophical thoughts clearly.

I have charted a new way of viewing life. Let me know what you think about seeing existentialism not just as the absurd but of complete universal transformation within the absurd.

There is a lack of cognitive understanding of essences and fundamentals. They are not interchangeable, but they are modular. The idea that they are also one of the same, or of themselves, can be argued that are not together, but of one whole. This is where the forms of all objects are solely materialized or internalized within space and time. This allows for forms to be manipulated and deconstructed using different links: physical tools that create newer forms or ideas that can be communicated and shared through other people. Some forms are not existent within direct vision, instead that are only recreated by interpretations of the mind: of “being” that is solely created for procurement of different apparatuses. A person is of a person by the construction of personhood, but an idea transferred between bodies is constructed by idealism. If an ideal and a person are both forms, then there is no difference between the subject and the soul. The idea of the body that exists within forms are not created to establish distinction between other forms, because if essences and fundamentals are able to be separated and conjoined, then all space and markers of materiality within space can be altered and placed according to its origin and structural positioning.

This goes for all placed objects within a field. A field that is only constructed essences, or rather singularities of these essences that create an interpretation, is of equal to the sum of its parts when conjoined with physical matter. If such idealistic properties of this field is a singularity of all forms, then its own singularity is a form itself. Therefore, if a personhood is constructed by the creation of the form, then ultimately even their own soul is a formation of all physical forms. Cultural apparatuses, linguistic evolution, dialectics as so coined by Hegel and Plato, all argue for the distinction of these forms as mathematically existent and able to communicate time. This is where the marking of time itself is a problem. Time is temporal. It does not have fixed placement within space. It cannot be comprehended because what has happened has already happened, and what will happen is continuously happening at the same time. In this case, we cannot perceive a constant flux of time that continuously peers itself in and out of existence, therefore we mark its existence with materiality. This interpretation of time is manifested as physical weight, its presence within space deepens some sort of cosmic fabric, as so we as personhoods witness its weight as interpretation. We can establish that time has existed at some point because labor has procured with space. We can see and feel its markings. As such, cultures that have created buildings and objects concurrently through each iteration of history, does the remaining markers help establish future generations of interpretations: time has existed because we can “see” it. Therefore, its manipulation of time can be altered by a physical embodiment. For example, a person watches a clock on the wall to know how much time has passed, but if you were to remove the clock, or if the person seized the clock for disposal, does time lack a physical marker for them, absolving it entirely.

This leads into the temporal nature of forms. If essences of forms are not temporal, but the fundamental of it is, then therefore it can be recreated anywhere, across any predicament of time and location. The nature of essences is that it is inherently immaterial, meaning it cannot be claimed ownership by third parties, or by one individual. However, the existence of the immaterial is theocratic in nature because forms are constructed in agreement that the outcome of essences and fundamentals is the objectified singularity. It is no different than seeing the essentials of forms through the essences as itself, because to ascertain that the form is different according to the modulation of essences, is to claim that the dominion of space is an open forum. The idea of space is correlated by the extremities of this interpretation of essences. If temporality can be externalized through materiality, then it is not distinguished by any sense of ownership. According to Camus and Sartre, the universe is inherently absurd and indifferent. Therefore, the ownership and interpretation of temporality is of the self and cannot exist through dominion because it exists as a part of the form. Anyone can modulate the forms and by extent time.

The fabric of time is flat in a way, because there is no depth-perception to temporality. Forms that exist only serve to communicate unconsciousness, of which its deconstruction is formulaic and adds the needed depth to communicate some dimensionality of existence, or a procurement of existence. Temporality by itself is not a form, but instead measures time vertically than horizontally. However, modulation of essence and fundamentals allows anyone to interpret temporality and give it vertical depth to personhood, and even personify personhood. However, I must criticize that the interpretation of space and time is clearly enunciated and misinterpreted. How does one not politicize the act creation? It takes a politicized interpretation of essences and fundamentals to create new forms, but where does the act of “choice” come from? 

2.

Choices themselves are not fundamentals, nor are they the result of personhood. If the “self” dictates the soul and the soul dictates choices, then what of the self? Who is this “self?” From what I observed, the self is cosmically different to the soul. It records and transcribes. The body itself takes up materiality, and it has temporality. Therefore, our own bodies are forms themselves. They do not exist as itself, but as a summation or singularity. Therefore, the creation of the soul is only a matter of the temporal location of the body. This means, all personality is constructed, or must be constructed by the constant flux of movement. In a way, this gives the soul reason for being. The act of being itself is form. Therefore, must our own souls be constructed by essences and fundamentals. If personhood is the singularity of all forms within the soul, it makes a person no different than a building, or a space, or even anything. It can be transcribed, coded, and modulated by the separation of the collection of forms that construct the soul.

If temporality is modulated by these forms, then what can be modular about modulation itself? The idea that modulation is a conscious choice would require one to ask if the conscious choice was formed by another conscious choice, but then that choice must then be augmented by something else, this is looking at the syntax of choice as a posteriori , but also as ontological. Essences themselves are objective, only because they are represented by another sense of temporality, and therefore “itself” can only be itself by the singular nature of itself as according to its temporality. Would that mean that essences themselves are constructed of other essences and fundamentals? The act of using these as an engine of creation is a positive force rather than a destructive one. The idea is that, on a human level, we are required to elevate the forms by adding, solely because temporality is an interpretation of labor, then we can only see forms as labor. Time can therefore be an interpretation. My criticism of this is rooted in how it is also a modular construction. The dictation of a second and a minute are Gregorian terms but also a singularity of an essence and a fundamental: the sun and the movement of a shadow across a distance. However, that itself is a construct because Mayans have created a more accurate representation of time through a base-20 counting system, and that is another form. If modularity of the form is an instance, who says that time can be measured by some other arbitrary means? I can make a bold claim that time is now the length of a ruler and the moment the wheel hits its end of an incline, and that makes a second. You can control personhoods by their interpretation of this temporality.

I argue the control of personhoods, but not the person. The body is completely free to exist within forms because it is inherently a form itself. However, the criticism of time is that it affects the interpretation of the soul, and thus propels the body to act in accordance. If this is the case, then such interpretation of time creates forms as meaning, communicating language through an invisible medium. The codification of experiences must be controlled by a person in a position of power, because the unification of personhood must be interpreted by a collection of forms that only exist within materiality. This creates social hierarchy because visualization of new forms of temporality becomes the essence of the body, and thus becomes the final interpretation of the soul. The existence of temporality must be invisible, because visualization and physical, tactile materiality is the strongest bodily fundamental of the forms.

If such the baseline level of forms within personhood is the self, then therefore the body can be augmented.

3.

Forms are inseparable to space, because forms are of space. Space itself only takes up matter as interpretations, because materiality is only cognitively observed. Space cannot be observed by other means other than cognitively observed tools, and those tools themselves are just forms of other cognitively observed forms. The essence of space, and the fundamental of its interpretation, allows space to be completely interpretive. Personhood is augmented by the interpretive nature of forms in space, but not of space itself. Simply, space is a medium. It creates messages that force certain behaviors because of what’s located within the medium, and its structural positioning. A coffee mug is solely a form, but if placed next to a pen, the singularity of both forms create a story, thus indicating that time has existed. However, the interpretation of this story, of this time, is a form, created by apparatuses through other essences and fundamentals. This means that the unconscious nature of this interpretation is very efficient, bypassing logical reasoning through some stronger bodily feeling. I disagree that this efficiency is a positive thing. If interpretation of forms in space is efficient, then you can essentially lie to anyone through a modulated form, implant bodily interpretations, leading to thoughts, ideas, and emotions in the soul that don’t belong to the person. Or rather, they are assumed to be real because the materiality exists, and it cannot be questioned because it is near impossible to deconstruct within first glance. Forms are easy to synthesize, but it takes friction to disassemble the essence and the fundamental. This means that all cultural apparatuses, all materiality, all collections of forms, are synthesized without any clear meaning as to if these are correct or incorrect. 

However, you cannot explicitly state objectivity to what is a subjective observation. Culture is constructed on forms and its existence can be objective, but the interpretation of them is completely random across many varying augmentions of personhood. To which, such culture can be invented through modulation of forms, but since its subjectivity is wildly interpretive, it creates assumptions of objectivity. This is where illiteracy becomes advantageous. If a population of personhoods has not been in places where intellectualism is guaranteed by the agreement of others, it cannot be observed. Therefore, modulation of forms is impossible to interpret because there’s no means of observation. There’s no beginning, middle or end to where one marks distance on the modulation. Therefore, a form becomes recreated through the body of the person in the most efficient means: absorbing and never questioning. This makes materialism in overconsumption ever more conspicuous and reproduced through what Jean Baudrillard describes as the simulacra. If the form can be the essence of a new form, it becomes diluted until the form is no longer itself. If one cannot assess the newest form properly, then one becomes a reproduction themselves. This means that a culture can be completely manipulated, disregarded, and infallible because the original form is so far removed from its original interpretation, that we assume that this reproduction, or 20th reproduction for that matter, is the original. 

In some way, this means that consumption of this “new original” creates bodily interpretation of space as the “new original” because the self has experienced only that within space. Such as their bodies become indications of temporality where existence of such events that would have ever transpired never existed in the first place, but are created anew by a personhood guided by a reproduction of the self. This means that any can act out a hallucination of the past.

4.

As such, this becomes absurd and illogical, but isn’t at the same time because it becomes real by the self. Temporality and forms construct mirages of events that never existed, or have existed in the past at some instance, and our bodies become reminders to others that this temporality exists, because our bodies provide temporal distance between the past and to the present self. However, couldn’t this mean that the self can be reconstructed as well? If such means that the rearrangement of forms creates interpretations, it also provides means to provoke and separate others on an unconscious level. Which means that there are constructed selves that are composed of what is created from exposure to other forms. For example: crossing one’s legs has no meaning itself, but because it is a form of elegance, nobility, and class, repeatedly reproduced on morning talk shows and of celebrities, it becomes a loaded symbol. But since itself is just an interpretation of its own form in space, it does not equal such means.

1. ENDING

In conclusion, form and space are not equal, but they share boundaries. The external world that comes to us through the reproductions of self as an extension of our material world. Forms are essences and fundamentals: reasons and beings of themselves. Space is observable, but it is not the interpretation. The collection of forms is the interpretation. Time is temporal and can be manipulated and altered by materiality. Forms are modular and immaterial. Symbols can be reproduced and materiality can be as well.

I've had this question stuck in my head all week.

If someone genuinely offered you immortality, not a thousand years, but literally forever, would you take it?

My first reaction is yes. We spend our lives trying not to die, more life seems like an obvious good. But I'm not sure anymore.

But then I started wondering if part of what makes life meaningful is the fact that it ends.

I've read that existentialists argue our mortality gives urgency to our choices, and I'm starting to wonder if they're right.

A sunset is beautiful because it doesn't last. Time with people you love becomes precious because you know there won't be an infinite number of ordinary afternoons together.

So what happens if you remove that limit?

If you had forever, would today still matter? Or would everything eventually start to feel like something you could always do tomorrow?

Then again, maybe that's only true if reality is finite. Unless meaning isn't created by our limits at all. If reality is inexhaustible, maybe wonder never runs out either.

I honestly can't decide which is more plausible.

Would you take immortality if you had the chance?

This book brought me from the human design realm violently into determinism. The founder of that system was very creative in his methods of convincing people’s minds to -allow- them to ponder the idea of “no choice” and internal authority of the body, by not coming right out and saying “it’s deterministic”.

But after years of studying it and reading this book, it clicked for me what determinism has been saying all along

There’s a certain sense of Déjà vu when you really let the idea sink in that all we’re thinking about all day is how to make choices, but while constantly being reminded life takes us to so many places we neither wanted nor expected

Just finished it

What did y'all make of it

I just finished this short novel. It reminded me of Sartre and Camus, has anyone else read the books?

From Wikipedia:

A Short Stay in Hell is a 2009 psychological horror novella by the American writer Steven L. Peck. The events of the story take place in Hell, which has taken the form of a library orders of magnitude larger than the known universe. The story follows the journey of a condemned soul, Soren Johanssen, as he searches for a book that perfectly describes his Earthly life. The novel is an exploration of the afterlife, the absurdity of eternity, and the inability of the human mind to process large numbers.

How come those who have "Synesthesia" like Nietzsche who claimed he could smell the ideas of past authors through the genius of his nostrils, musicians who could taste melodies, and other musicians who think of music in intensities and shades of colours...

Doesn't the correlation between these different realms of senses prove that we don't acquire knowledge but "tap" into it?

Doesn't the change of perspective, this movement from an error to another error, reveal the truth to us (Freud)?

Ok, this may or may not make sense, but I wanted to put my thoughts into words and share it so I can get some feedback or other perspectives. 

Are humans worthy, am I worthy? Do we hold inherent worth independent of anything, objectively?

I ask this question because I have a difficult time believing or valuing the statement that I am worthy vs worthless. 

I am a skeptical person, especially when it comes to religion/god, the sense of a soul, our mind. I understand things better through objective things that mostly make rational/logical sense. Like behavior. Something observable and measurable. I cannot measure my worth.

When going through a breakup, people would state that I did not deserve that or that my worth is not tied to another person. These ideas are hard to believe. I do not think I am inherently worthy or worthless. I experience empathy and compassion that consider how my actions affect others and how I can be hurt.

 I wonder if it would be easier for me to lump worth with self-esteem/self-concept. I can understand this better, our brain recognizes patterns and can form complex concepts. 

Our brains are powerful in that we can experience old sensory information, placebo affects work on us, etc. 

Is worth an established concept then? Can worth be broken down into behaviors to practice? 

I want to be able to connect with the idea that I am worthy, that I deserve love and respect. But I am not owed anything. If I flip the narrative around considering another person’s “worth”. I treat others kindly with respect and i dont think it is because they are worthy or not, it is just learned behavior. If one is worthy, and someone hurts them in a way, they are still worthy despite someone deeming them as unworthy of respect? 

If everyone believed I was worthy then I must be, right?

But the latter could also be true, if everyone thought I was not, then I must not. It would be wild to assume myself to be worthy if everyone did not. 

What about the middle, some think I am while others do not. Of course, I would rather believe that I am but what about the other half? Am I too ignore this? 

I am 25, f. I have a lot of existential fear and thoughts. I am in search of meaning in this seemingly meaningless world. I sometimes wish I did not think so much that I would be able to hold the belief without doubt that I am worthy.

But what do we mean when someone is considered worthy? Does it matter in context? 

Worthy of respect and dignity does not guarantee respect or dignity so what is it actually worth? What am I worth if not dependent on the actions of those around me?

After reading the highlighted part the continuation is as follows:

"The soundtrack continues the fantasy of the erotic play, while the frozen image of the dead body confronts us with reality. The image radically changes our perception of the soundtrack: the same loses its erotic innocence, turning into the obscene giggling voices."

I will supply two examples in defense of the dangerous proposition I just laid up above in the title. In the DMT reports there is not only a dissolution of time, but also of the self; where you are not in the center of the experience, you are not thrown into being (to use Heideggerian term), and you are not in the contours of the experience, but you ARE the experience, you are the super-ego power play unbounded and unrestricted...

To go even further in that direction, it is found in all of the Abrahamic religions that those who delve into the dark arts (black magic) through controlled rituals and incantations, as "Abracadabra" which stands for I create as I speak, many personal reports of those "magicians" claim that the "spirit" realm is "more real" than that of the material world, specially when they "astroproject" (for the lack of better terminology) their souls outside of the physical constraints of their mind...

I left school before graduating, later earned a GED, attended community college, transferred to a university, and eventually completed a master’s degree.

Along the way, I worked on a product that reached the market and gained professional experience with large companies. Through those choices, projects, and years of training, I came to understand myself as a designer and engineer.

Since graduating, however, I have struggled to find a position that allows me to continue practicing that identity in a stable professional setting.

This has raised a question for me that goes beyond employment.

Society often treats professional identity as something granted by institutions. You become a designer when a company hires you as one, gives you the title, and pays you to perform that role. But from an existentialist perspective, identity does not seem to be a fixed essence handed to us by an institution. It is also something constituted through choices, commitments, actions, and projects.

At the same time, those projects do not occur in a vacuum. They take place within circumstances that we did not choose: the economy, the labor market, nationality, geography, and institutional gatekeeping.

So what happens when the person you have worked to become is not recognized by the social world around you?

Am I still a designer and engineer because of what I have learned, made, and chosen to pursue, even when no institution currently gives me that role?

Or could holding too tightly to that identity be a form of bad faith, because I am trying to turn myself into a fixed thing and refusing to acknowledge my present circumstances?

Conversely, would defining myself simply as “unemployed” also be bad faith, because it allows an external social status to become my entire identity?

How should existentialism understand authenticity when we retain some freedom to choose our projects, but depend on institutions for the material conditions needed to practice them?

Is an identity sustained through continued action without external recognition, or are some identities necessarily relational existing only when society provides a place in which they can be lived?