Endurance Without Reason – What’s the point of life? Why carry on?

You ask, what’s the point? Why carry on, why do people carry on?
That is 100% legit, because that’s what you feel.
It’s no surprise you aren’t the only one. Experiencing futility, existential angst, among other things becomes one of those truly democratic emotions.
It visits all people, regardless of wealth, age, status, or health.
I ask the same questions, without offering answers.
But the questions could possibly lead you to a space where meaning transcends the questions.
Is there a root cause, a deeper problem? Is the numbness a symptom, or the actual disease?

I don’t advocate easy, one-size-fits-all answers, but I do try to capture what I experience in evolving language.
I describe my feeling as as viscerally as possible without referring to blanket statements or questions such as “why do I carry on.”
Specificity helps me. Asking: the coffee I had this morning, how did it feel, holding the cup? How did it taste? Was it terrible? Should I try tea, perhaps?
Do I need to see what I feel when I don’t attempt to drink a coffee, but rather drive out before the traffic becomes hectic, and instead get a coffee for the homeless guy I know sleeps on the street not far from me… He might still enjoy something, because of me, still hanging in there, if only for a while.
Planned discomfort, like the example above, helps me, as does comparison, looking down, and not up.
I was a witness when a friend chose to exit this reality. Maybe the shock of confrontation with impermanence, and the lack of words to even articulate such an experience reframed a lot for me in later years.

Nothing keeps most people alive except the fact that they didn’t die yet.
That’s it. They kept breathing. Sometimes that’s the whole damn secret.
The rest, the meaning, the joy, the love, the beauty, arrives later, if it arrives.
Maybe there is no reason, not the kind you’re hunting for.
Maybe survival isn’t about purpose but about endurance.
I often reckon; I’ll carry my carcass through the hours, stubbornly, until something shifts.
Because things do shift, even when you swear they won’t.
And if they don’t, fine, then at least you stayed long enough to prove the world wrong about what you could bear.
Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit you don’t know why you’re still here.
The trick, if there is one, is that you don’t need a grand reason. You need a small one, something stupid, almost insulting in its simplicity. A smell. A laugh. A moment you didn’t expect.
Maybe even the sheer defiance of saying: I’m still here, and you don’t get to write my ending yet.