The stuff I'm reading says all we need to do is awaken. That's all the purpose anyone needs for a life. Creativity is a great way to be alive to the present moment, Ralph.

Hope your anxiety eases

how can u be creative when u feel nothing?

i keep jumping into my usual puddles of shit to feel something. Even if its just to feel like filth.

any ways you find useful to start?

how can you view a situation differently, JaiJai? Are there other vantage points? Just the act of standing on the table for a different perspective or physical movement can really help... the feeling of standing on one leg or tossing and catching a ball can physically change where you are in your brain. Talking to others can sometimes help too....

Okay: "lost" is something that happens to a lot of people. You've been lost in the physical world before, haven't you? What do you do there? Does it make you suicidal?

Just pointing out that there's a value judgment attached, somewhere, to the idea of being lost emotionally.

how can u be creative when u feel nothing?

i keep jumping into my usual puddles of shit to feel something. Even if its just to feel like filth.

any ways you find useful to start?

The dilemma of would you rather feel pain or nothing at all... the grass is always greener on the other side. I can act in certain ways just to make myself feel guilt (but less lonely) and then I regret it but then when I am numb again doing something stupid doesn't seem so bad next to doing nothing.

Creativity is an experiment with a third option, doing something which is not nothing but also not acting out. How to get started - I am sure there are entire books on this but puzzles can help, or coming up with different ways to spell out acronyms (e.g., People Eating Tasty Animals ), practice scales on an instrument until a melody starts to emerge, doodle, write haikus, read about the history of something you love (coffee for me)... things like that. This is still an experiment for me though, no idea if it will work or not

Just pointing out that there's a value judgment attached, somewhere, to the idea of being lost emotionally.

Damned is another word for lost. To be lost is to feel the pain of damnation. I'd say being lost is a value judgment. More importantly though it is in my personality to want to be achieving something, making progress. This conflicts with a fear of commitment and shifting priorities, leading to ambivalence and indecision. I can't be very effective in a state of indecision therefore am of less worth than someone who at least has a direction and the will to pursue it.

The thing about equating damnation with being lost is that damnation is often held to be a nearly permanent condition, alleviated only by a pleading for forgiveness. Is that really equivalent to the kind of "lost" that you feel?

Also, damnation has a surprisingly strong religious content. Do you feel lost in a religious sense?

I'm also not sure that I equate worth with effectiveness. Hitler was a very effective leader; he had a direction and will. Personally, I'd rather be ineffectually good than really good at being bad. ;-)

I don't feel lost with respect to religion, but the lack of direction I feel is in my life overall, which gets into the larger philosophical questions, which in turn is religious territory for some folks.

Also, I am not sure what to base worth on. It is true that effectiveness isn't necessarily worth, but isn't it at least a part of it?

What about the possibility that the "value" of a human being is a dubious concept, at best.

Would you really want to rank every single person by some arbitrarily chosen measurement, no matter how complex? And then what would you do with it? Torment yourself, or applaud yourself, because of where you fit in that ranking? Or alter your behavior towards others for the same reason?

The way I see it, it may be possible to weigh different actions according to worth, though I'm not sure, and the measurement would still be arbitrary.

But people? I figure we're all worthy. After all, I see us as all connected, like "we're in this together". If I stopped and tried to separate myself out so that I could measure my worth "independently" of where I fit in (if that's even a reasonable thing to try), I'd have to stop being me to do it. And all for a thing, a measurement, a number, that won't matter when I die.

I'd rather roll up my sleeves and get to work, instead.

Another way to say it might be: Pick a direction, any direction, and call it "forward".

And I bet I sound pompous, which might just mean there aren't sufficient words for what I mean. Because I know exactly what you're talking about, and I honestly believe what I've just said, but I couldn't for the life of me explain the process I went through to get from there to here.

Good points. I'm already tormenting myself with a sense of worthlessness so if there was some way to establish self worth then I could have a means of challenging those thoughts. I can see how taking this to its logical conclusion leads into some awkward problems.

Picking a direction is the hard part. I always seem to double back on myself after a short time and find myself going back wishing I had gone another way. Not to worry though, I'm starting to get a picture of what "my" direction looks like.