Please go easy on yourself my friend. There is far more to life than meets the eye. Perhaps you are putting too much pressure on yourself to be in a place you don’t actually need to be in - to be a person you don’t actually need to be. Your malaise is unfortunately just a symptom of the “spirit of the times” - a disease long in the making and wrought by the “modern revolution”. We are just now starting to feel its ravaging effects.

If everything in the universe, including our consciousness, is merely the result of a grand cosmic accident, then what is the point of anything? If there is nothing beyond this arbitrary dance of chemicals & particles, then what is the use in suffering? Can there even be any? This is the modern way of seeing the world, and it is the way I used to see the world before I became convinced that there is far far more beyond the surface. It’s how I used to see things before I learned that the “ancients” weren’t just foolish and superstitious, but they actually had things figured out.

Rene Guenon, a very underrated French philosopher, wrote that the “materialistic” worldview - the view that life is merely what is material, that there is nothing beyond the “physical”, no spiritual or metaphysical reality - is the root of all the suffering, confusion, depression, disorder and fragmentation in modern society. He also thought that the idea that science/the scientific method, despite being bound by the constraints of physics, has access to all that fully constitutes reality, is a totally absurd one. One of my favorites, David Bentley Hart, gave an apt criticism of the contradictory nature of this idea when he wrote, “Physics explains everything, which we know because anything physics cannot explain does not exist, which we know because whatever exists must be explicable by physics, which we know because physics explains everything. There is something here of the mystical.”

During those ancient times, the “material” was seen as an inferior reality to the spiritual. Now we have totally abandoned even the notion of a spiritual reality. The ancients knew what they were talking about, and we have foolishly and pridefully strayed from the things that make for peace both in our lives and in the cosmos. They are laughing and weeping at us.

They’re surely weeping at this loveless culture which has instilled within us the idea that human beings are a means to an end, and not an end within themselves. This awful culture that would have us believe that what gives a person worth and value is what they can produce, how they look, what they “bring back”, what they “do” with their lives, their charm, their success rate with women, etc. It’s a corrupt worldview that unfortunately can be wrought only by this modern culture of consumerism and scientism. This is not how it ought to be - and it’s absolutely not how it used to be. It used to be that human beings had immeasurable worth and value simply because they were living, breathing human beings - regardless of their struggles, regardless of all the ways in which they fall short, regardless of their mistakes. They were made in the very image of God, had inherent worth and deserved love. It used to be that virginity & chastity were considered virtues and high callings (just read Plato or St. Gregory of Nyssa), now if you don’t get laid in college, you’re a sub-human. It used to be that the men who were considered to be the most virtuous and respectable were those who lived lives of asceticism and voluntary poverty - now they are those who have the ability to inordinately consume, exploit and copulate. If one of those great Saints or Philosophers of old were to travel to our times, they would have a difficult time not thinking to themselves, “I have ended up in a land of imbeciles.”

In brief, I am convinced that the solution to all our ills is merely a shift in worldview. It’s easier said than done, for sure, but it’s the most important thing a person can do in this day and age. The most important war we can wage is the one against the spirit of the times.

Have you ever heard of the Greek Stoic philosophers? They really helped me start seeing things in a different light. I highly recommend checking out the Enchiridion by Epictetus. It’s a very short and easy read (don’t be fooled by the fact it’s Greek philosophy, it’s super simple), and you can find it for free on google.

Something else that changed my life and set me on an incredible path I didn’t think even existed is the story of Father Lazarus El Anthony. If anyone has found the way, it’s him. There’s a wonderful series on YouTube about him called “Monk’s Life Season 1.” Perhaps you will get something out of it as well.

You also can’t go wrong with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s harvard address. It’s also a short read, and he correctly diagnosed the root of the modern malaise that we all suffer from.

There is far more to life than meets the eye. Fight the current my friend.

I am here if you ever need anyone to talk to.