Uniqueness is weird. On the one hand, I am myself, and no one else is. Therefore my life is special and has value, the same as everyone else. On the other hand, all other people are unique, for the same reasons. In that sense, I'm not special at all. I'm better and worse than someone else at literally everything I do. I will never become the best at anything. I am not special, simply because everyone is special, and am not unique because seven billion other unique people exist. I don't really get what I'm supposed to do here. I'm normal. But I don't feel normal. I feel terrible and want to be good but I can't because I'm not special because everyone is special and I'm caught in a loop here.
if it helps at all to hear: a slice of pizza doesn't have to be different from, or better than, every other slice of pizza to be a damn good one, and do some good in the world. witnessed, though; i know that feel.
With so many other slices of pizza around, why does This Slice even exist? Is it necessary? What is its purpose?
Hard to say. With a pizza, probably because someone made it to eat/to be appreciated somehow/for other reasons. It's obviously a bit tougher with a person. Personally, I don't think there's any purpose for any of us being alive. It's a random happenstance of the universe and the situations and circumstances that lead up till now. The universe happened, hydrogen gets fused into helium and progressively heavier elements, stars happened, planets formed, this one (at least!) happened to have all the ingredients necessary for this weird biological shit that eventually got us here. There's no "necessity" and no "purpose" involved. It's not necessary for any one organism or person to exist. Nothing has any grand purpose; we just exist in a web of interactions and balances. People (and other living things) aren't produced with any purpose in mind. It's just a trick of biology and the drive to reproduce. These are only my opinions and I'm not saying I'm correct in feeling this way. There could totally be other things at work, either directly (e.g., some sort of deity) or indirectly (maybe some weird fate/determinism shit, IDK). And maybe that's comforting? But I can only work within the views that I hold. For me, there is no outer purpose to guide me. I have to make my own purpose if I want one. (Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.) Generally, I tend to think less of "purpose" and more "what I want out of this weird little slice of existence that I get and that probably won't be repeated, at least not by my consciousness as I understand it now". Again, for me personally, what I want is to do something productive, to help people, to be with people that I love, and to generally enjoy myself more than not. Those are super broad categories, and there's no One Right Way to do any of them, and they might not matter to other people at all. So that was a lot of rambling to basically say that if you want purpose, you probably need to define it for yourself (or adopt some other views that impose it from outside). Some people don't need to feel like they have a purpose, and that's fine; some people do, and that's fine, and it can come from many sources (religion, self, philosophy, whatever).
I basically want things I'm never going to have. I want to be someone important, someone famous, someone good. I want to be a hero or a martyr or a genius, not some loser who can't even find their keys a third of the time.
I mean... you can totally be both. It's pretty interesting reading about famous people (I mostly read about scientists because that's what I'm into) and you find out that they're just people. Like Gregor Mendel! Who established some of the basic principles of inheritance that are still in use today (and we still talk about Mendelian genetics), and couldn't even pass an exam to get a job teaching high school. He failed multiple times, in fact. Watson and Crick made some spectacularly dumb DNA models before finally getting it right (putting aside all the unethical shit they did). An incredibly famous scientist whose name I'm forgetting published a totally wrong DNA structure in a major journal without checking the basic chemistry of it. I think it's important not to put these people on huge pedestals. They're still just people and they do the same dumb shit that everyone does.
Glib answer: become a doctor. You'll probably save a life and people will respect you. Serious answer: I can't answer that for anyone but me. It depends on how you define being a "hero", or being "important" or "meaningful". Like... people who maintain sewer systems are extremely important and meaningful, but you don't necessarily see anyone calling them heroes (although personally, I think they are). Or, like, the people at the pharmacy who help me get my medication. They don't have a glamorous job, they're not in the public eye, but I'm extremely grateful to them and think they are very important and meaningful. So what you do depends on how you want to be a hero. Are you content with being one to yourself, without external praise and validation? Or do you want to visibly be a "hero", with other people singing your accolades? Because that will change what you do.
i don't think my life has any significance if other people don't give me praise and validation. without other people acknowledging i exist in a positive way, i don't really see any reason to exist. of course, that's because i'm mentally ill. (except i'm "not" really mentally ill, according to mom and a mental health professional)
Do you have any talents/thibgs you really like to do? Personally I think people who have a thing they like to do are really cool. And as i understand it this is not just me, I can do some really bland stuff like crochet and cook but to my bf I am like amazing. Even small stuff like that can make you a hero in some people's eyes!
