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Existential Ennui

I have been having a feeling of restlessness, meaninglessness, and something that may be described as an existential boredom where I cannot feel excited about things even when they are exciting things.

I am involved in a bunch of different projects and with more things to do and ways to make money if I wanted to drive myself crazy, but I can’t shake this feeling that nothing I do is going to make a difference in changing the way I feel, because these things I do are external things and the way I am feeling reflects an internal restlessness that I cannot explain.

I wonder if I am going through some form of a spiritual crisis where my being (as Cass calls it) “spiritually undeclared”n is creating a sense of loss and lack of direction.

Or maybe part of the problem is that I am drifting away from identification of me and wanting to be part of an eternal but I also want to experience that feeling of being part of the eternal and yet I am not advanced enough to even forgo some of my basic ego attachments.

As a result I am using coping mechanisms that can be described as stress eating and stress achieving and stress goal setting.

Trying to fill up my life with many difficult and important sounding things to do because I thought maybe these would get me closer to the sense of the divine, or at least create an illusion of euphoria or bliss that may keep me hanging on a bit more and not descend to the depths of helplessness.

I can also learn to sit with this feeling, and see where it takes me, without trying to do a damn thing about it.

People have told me that this is the time to be good to myself. What does that mean? Is being good to myself taking a form of discipline where I refuse to stuff my stomach with food knowing that it is not hungry and that I am feeling the hunger from another source? Is being good to myself meditating? Is being good to myself drinking more water? Getting more exercise? Learning to relax and enjoy my time with Jaden?

I just don’t know.

Everything feels very meaningless.

Things are going to end for me and others. I can’t connect with the purpose of why we are then, alive to begin with. I cannot connect with the impulse of wanting to experience the self at this point.

This was written by Jane Chin. Posted on Monday, March 8, 2010, at 7:19 pm. Filed under SIGNIFICANCE EXPT. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykl/ Michael Reinhart

    I can’t tell when you wrote this, but if it was recently, I hope you’re feeling better. I understand.

    I was googling the term “existential ennui” because I wanted to find a cure and this was one of the results… guess it’ll just pass. If you found the cure, please let me know. ;)

    m

  • http://janechin.com/about Jane Chin

    Michael:

    Thanks for visiting. I wrote this on Mar 8, 2010.

    My cure for this was 2 fold:

    First, I made the decision that I no longer needed to “find God” to believe that my life had relevance. I spent a lot of time searching for some kind of a discovery, some type of an indisputable connection with an invisible divinity. I found that I had devoted a tremendous amount of this energy in the search process, and it was exhausting.

    Second, I made the decision to stay engaged with this existential ennui. I wouldn’t run away from it, or distract or numb myself from it. I stayed and experienced the ennui and let it wash over me and paid attention to how it felt. Maybe part of it was energy conservation, but another part of it was to see whether ennui itself *was* the message.

    What does your existential ennui feel like?

    Jane

  • hunchback

    i was half-way into it before i knew i was there. it crept over me slowly and suddenly all at once, like a fog.

    after spending years examining my own experience i learned several things: 1. i mistakenly looked to external resources to try to process my existential angst (books, people, philosophy, therapy, lifestyle changes); 2. i bought into the whole “you are just having a mid-life crisis” thing; 3. i tried to understand something i should have been focused on feeling and experiencing.

    now i have learned to accept it like some sort of form of existential hair-growth in weird places during puberty. i developed an opposite strategy that life wasn’t coming apart, it was coming together. when it felt like life was falling apart, i decided which pieces to keep.

    i found people who were patient enough to walk beside me on my journey, realizing i was on my own journey and they would only be with me for a time, and maybe never understand. i embraced my feelings of uncertainty and fear until they stuck or evaporated.

    i know what i just said may seem poetic and stupid, but that’s how it is for me so far…

  • http://janechin.com/about Jane Chin

    hunchback, what you just said is poetic and very beautiful.

    thank you.

  • Christine

    Dear Jane,
    I very much resonate with your thoughts. I find my sense ennui increases when I am alone, and as I get older .I am 55, single, and do not have children. My parents have both died within the past 6 years. However whatever one’s family or relatiinship staus , I think the senseof ennui can exist. I think that with most of us living longer this is a stae that will come and go. I have learned to ‘sit with it’. The only thing I know for certain is that nothing , not even feelings, stay the same.

  • http://janechin.com Jane Chin, Ph.D.

    Dear Christine,

    Thank you for commenting! Yes — “…nothing, not even feelings, stay the same”… back when I was in graduate school and feeling drowned in the throes of graduate studies and clinical depression, my husband used to tell me to keep reminding myself, “this too, will pass.”

    I wonder why many of us have a hard time “sitting” with this feeling instead of trying to fix it or escape it or block it out.

  • Ele

    I had heard about existential ennui, but hadn’t found a really good definition of it.
    Until now. Not only you made me really understand what does the expression mean, but I also know now how to call what I feel everyday.
    Thank you for that. Even if I don’t talk to anyone about it, it’s nice to have a name for it.