Ask HN: How did you find joy in life? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did you find joy in life?

I can't find joy in life. Nothing interesting. When I think rationally I am excepting myself as whom I'm. Yes, for example, friends talk to me passionately about something (music, events, chess, etc..). I'm just like, "yeah, interesting". I never feel excited about anything deeply. I admire people like Feynman who are passionate and curious about science, life, to learn. I want to feel like them but nothing triggers that type of feeling. In the end, I'm just passing my days. Naval says in his book something like " we will be forgotten 100000 years from now. There is no meaning". this is not the case for me. I don't want to be remembered or make something useful for people, for the world. I just want to be curious, and passionate like Zorba (Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis), like Feynman. Without curiosity, man is nothing. If you had experienced this type of thing, how did you handle it?

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In my very non-professional opinion, that sounds like depression. I'm pulling on personal experience here. I've felt very similarly. I take medication and see a therapist now. I also don't experience these feelings any more. I don't know if I solved a problem or grew out of a phase.

To answer your question, though: I found a friendly community of people that held a similar worldview to me.

Exactly my first thought.

“The core symptom of depression is said to be anhedonia, which refers to loss of interest or a loss of feeling of pleasure in certain activities that usually bring joy to people.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_(mood)

I don't think looking up to Feynman as a role model is a good idea. The stories Feynman told about himself and the way he portrayed himself were not necessarily true. I've read an account of someone who was his neighbor and knew him well (was a physicist, too), and it wasn't very flattering. It sounded like Feynman was pretty insecure and cared a great deal what people think about him and that they consider him a genius and a very interesting man.

Zorba the Greek is a fictional character. Not a great role model at all, since he's purely a made up construct.

>It sounded like Feynman was pretty insecure and cared a great deal what people think about him and that they consider him a genius and a very interesting man.

So, just like almost everybody else - but in his case he was indeed a genius and very interesting...

>Zorba the Greek is a fictional character. Not a great role model at all, since he's purely a made up construct.

Missing the point...

> So, just like almost everybody else

Projection?

No, experience with people on the planet. People care what others things of them and how they consider them, and are, more often than not, insecure about it.

That may be true, but most of them don't go to the extent of writing a book whose sole intention seems to be showing how cool they are ("Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman").

Well yeah, because most of them don't have anything nearly as worthy of accomplishments to be able to show off "how cool they are", as opposed to Feynman.

By exercising every day and playing a music instrument. If you can't exercise, just do a ~2 hour walk (in any weather). Go out and walk. Same with music, if you don't know how to play, just make sounds with it. Any sounds, the way you can. I use my bass guitar as a stress ball. I can't play it in a conventional sense, but I can make sounds I like and it helps me.

I'm similar, I remember when I was a teen the way I'd obsess over things, now I just don't care about anything. I can't get excited. I think part of it is ageing, part of it could just be loneliness or depression, but I also think the way we can always distract ourselves with random crap on the internet is really bad for us.

Over November I'll be going on a hiatus of anything that I do just to fill time and distract myself to prevent boredom.

Have you tried talking to a therapist about this?

It is very hard to give advice for an individual based on so little information. A good therapist will try to track down a possible source of the problems, or give tools to handle the situation.

Perhaps one source of frustration might be an overly rational approach to joy? Have you considered alternatives, such as religion, or certain strands of philosophy? In the grand scheme of things, it's not so clear cut that rationalism is the best approach to finding meaning in life.

Another option might be that you value something (curiosity) highly, but don't act towards developing it? Perhaps if you invest some time in a random subject (e.g. one of music, events, chess) you will learn new things and get rewarded for that, either internally or socially. That might spark some joy!

Good luck, you're not the only one who's had to struggle with this.

I've felt the same way for over 15 years, no solution in sight. I've tried the meds for many years, I've tried therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and many other things and nothing has worked. I've also started to feel less interested in things I thought I was interested in.

The only thing really keeping me alive and fighting is my girlfriend and my family, which I have pretty poor contact with if I'm honest, but I still don't want to upset them.

I thought about exactly this today. If my family or a gf need something, I just do it. Call it, buy it, work it, solve it. No procrastination, no psychological problems. But when I’m finally alone, nothing drives me at all. It’s sad to think that I must go and find/make someone to live for, just to able to live.

Makes me think that people who talk about kids are just those whom it hit much earlier.

Having kids is mostly reproductive instincts. Which is different from the instinct to support your "tribe".

Maybe you need find some place to volunteer? help your community? or do any kind of meaningful work?

> It’s sad to think that I must go and find/make someone to live for, just to able to live.

Do you think you can just stop being a mammal?

Cultivate your curiosity and find ways to help decent people in need. If you must have a benchmark, growing the quantity of those who will miss you when you’re gone seems like a reasonable default.

YMMV. Worked for me.

Are you getting enough exercise, eating well, and maintaining good relationships? You sound depressed or maybe dysthmic. A lot of how you feel is due to simple biology and not finding the right thought. Your gut flora probably has more to do with it than what book you may or may not be reading.

Who you are isn't set in stone. You can be an unhappy intellectual as long as you want. You can also introduce factors that shake up your personality and interests and emotions, experiment with them, and see which version of yourself you like better.

Think of yourself as a repo that you just have to keep refactoring and forking and rebuilding until you make it work the way you like...

Just possibly, your low engagement and low interest are symptoms of depression or similar.

What cures are there for depression other than

1. anti-depressants

2. therapy / exercise / diet changes

3. a perspective change

4. ignoring it

Sleep deprivation

That’s a short term band aid and possibly damaging long term.

Do you have data/studies for either side? Genuinely interested in this, because intuitively it makes sense - sleep deprivation amplifies emotions - but I also have experienced first hand that long term sleep deprivation slowly deteriorates my emotional state.

There’s probably way more going on, but the glymphatic system impairment caused by (proper) sleep deprivation could be one of the big factors. Basically the trash can’t be taken out. Here’s a paper that explores neurological disease as a result of that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6261373/

ECT works on many treatments per patient where the active ingredient may be the same as sleep deprivation:

"Another proposed mechanism of action is that the seizures induced by ECT cause a profound change in sleep architecture (a reversible inhibition of REM sleep); it is this change in the state of the organism that drives the therapeutic effects of ECT and not any simple change in the release of neurotransmitters, neurotrophic factors and/or hormones."

So a small percentage of patients not relapsing after one sleep deprivation would actually make it the best available cure with reduced risks compared to ECT.

Other treatments possibly aren't curative and have not as serious side effects as ECT, more similar to sleep deprivation.

I'm not really interested in giving anyone medical advice, etc, based on my selective reading of pubmed, I just think it is important to list treatment options neutrally and with more consideration of what self treatment patients are probably very effectively applying if managed medical treatment is supposed to have a safer and better outcome.

LSD (not without risks but it changed my life). Maybe that counts as #3 though.

I’d follow the results of Cybin and their psilocybin clinical trials.

Well, 4 can also be considered as "just let some time pass", which as a cure can be synonymous with 3, or with 5: a change of fortunes/circumstances (as there is also situational depression, being depressed about actual shitty circumstances, from sickness and close deaths to incarceration).

In any case, those 4 things you've mentioned are well enough already.

Sex and love

Some things to take into consideration:

- Optimizing the microbiome. There’s tons of studies around various strains and methodologies etc. You could benefit from just eating no sugar and more fiber, or you could be in need of a fecal matter transplant. Unfortunately the microbiome and its effects on health is still not that well understood.

- Light therapy, or photobiomodulation with near-infrared light has some promising studies. I’ve personally used it to great effect.

- Magnesium supplementation has been shown to work in some treatment-resistant cases (obviously only works if you’re deficient). Mg is quickly eliminated via kidneys, so lower doses spread over the day might work better.

- Check Glycine levels (or just try a supplement, it’s cheap). Low levels are linked to depression. It also improves sleep usually, a nice side effect.

- Anything that lowers inflammation in the brain could work well in treatment resistant depression.

I read an article about gardening being a great source of anti depression. Not only the activity, but also the bacterias in the soil, which we are deprived of in our modern society with it's hygiene and antibiotics. These bacterias lived with us for a very long time (thousands of years) and just recently we started to kill them in us. Additionally there are connections between the gut microbiome and the brain which are not fully explored yet.

I was sitting on a small hill in the grass and was feeling depressed like the weeks and months before that. I figured, a little bit of dirt couldn't hurt. I licked my finger, stuck it in the sand, and ate it.

This is of course anecdotally, but I'm certain it helped me.

I'm very glad you are feeling better, but it's important for others to be aware that this is pseudoscience.

Do you have access to cold water. sea lake, bath with ice? Get in on a regular basis (with necessary precautions)! Access to a sauna? Get in on a regular basis. Engage in regular exercise, cardio is great. Don't feel like it? Do it anyway, treat it like it's meds because in a very real sense it is. Get your diet in order. Sugar is the devil! Get your sleep in order. Try and get to sleep before midnight and when you wake up in the morning go outside (before 9am) and get some morning light in your eyes. It improved my sleeping pattern immensely.

It may not be a dead cert cure for depression but all of the above has accumulative effects over time and it is more difficult to feel bad mentally when you are feeling really good physically.

Favorite-worthy comment, thanks! I've certainly had success with some of these and would like to add more to my routine. (I've found it that having a stable, healthy daily routine helps a lot by itself. Getting used to actually getting up and making coffee immediately after I wake up has made a surprisingly large difference to my mornings)

> Engage in regular exercise, cardio is great. Don't feel like it? Do it anyway, treat it like it's meds because in a very real sense it is.

This is not necessarily good advice, overtraining is a thing and actually causes depressed mood. Check heart rate variability to make sure you are rested enough to exercise.

People with depression should really try to keep inflammation low, and preventing overtraining is an important part of that.

This is like saying an anorexic shouldn’t eat because they might eat unhealthy food.

Everyone should get regular exercise. Worry about overtraining after you’ve started training at all.

Overtraining happens right after you start out, because you're not used to the training at that point. You're suddenly running a _huge_ ATP deficit, and ATP (and other metabolites) can't be produced on a whim, metabolism has to adapt. Many people stop right after they started because they exhausted themselves too quickly, instead of waiting 2 days and continuing then. Everybody should be worried about overtraining. Not only for mental health, but also metabolic and heart health. You know, sudden cardiac arrest and things like that.

I don't disagree at all with doing regular training. I'm doing 10km walks almost every day now. But everybody's metabolic capabilities are different, and rest periods are highly individual. Rest isn't optional, ask any bodybuilder.

Granted overtraining is a thing but undertraining or no training is also a thing. At the level most people are at (sedentary or undertrained) coupled with the fact that people have reasonable intuitions as to when they feel tired or not, the risks of overtraining is signficantly less that the benefits of regular exercise both physically and mentally.

You do mention inflammation in a previous comment and overtraining increases it but does the negative consequence of inflammation due to overtraining on how one feels subjectively outweigh the cascade of endorphins and neurotransmitters in response to exercise that correspond to an uplift in mood or an alleviation of stress? I'm not sure but in the given context (original post) your point is valid but of much less concern probabilistically and physiologically.

I do grant however that that is only my opinion and very much up for debate.

> does the negative consequence of inflammation due to overtraining on how one feels subjectively outweigh the cascade of endorphins and neurotransmitters in response to exercise that correspond to an uplift in mood or an alleviation of stress?

Usually exercise in overtraining doesn’t feel good in the way you are describing it. It creates extra stress and the body won’t be inclined to release endorphins to encourage that behavior.

When lockdown started I built 1 mile / 30 minutes of walk every day into my routine, plus a few minutes' worth of core strength stuff etc twice per day, short enough not to bore me. (I worked out decades ago that I was never going to spend hours a day down the gym!) I think it helps, and it is at the lower end of widely agreed minimum exercise levels for physical health. And I skip it occasionally when I really want to.

None of this is going to be "overtraining" and/or earn me medals.

If you had ME/CFS, you‘d end up in overtraining. Metabolism is highly individual.

Electroconvulsive therapy

Travel / change of environment

Religion/spirituality, which might be 3. But meditation gets you into a place where you just go "I'm unhappy" without the unhappiness actually consuming your life. Religion removes sources of unhappiness - you make peace with your inevitable death, missing a limb, missing a child, being broke, not being smart enough, wanting more, and so on.

My boys (ages 10 and 12) bring me more joy than anything else in my life ever has. At least so far anyway.

Read Impro by Keith Johnstone. Had a lot of practical games I could try to enhance my playfulness, imagination, social abilities, etc. He also started with the exact same problem you mention.

This is an area I'm pretty passionate about.

So first of all, it's pretty clear that you _do_ have some interests. You mention Feynman and Kazantzakis. That sounds like you're interested in the history of science and literature. That sounds pretty cool.

Many people will recommend going to a professional which I won't try to dissuade you from but that's not mutually exclusive with examining your lifestyle.

I'm obsessed with this podcast by Andrew Huberman (Stanford Neuroscientist) because he's talking about a scientific basis for stuff that has "felt" true to me for a while. Your food diet affects how you feel but your information diet does massively as well. There is a neurochemical basis for this with your baseline dopamine levels, that sets your motivation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU&t=779s

I also recommend reading the book Dopamine Nation.

Too much social media will fry your brain. If you're checking Hacker News more than a handful times of day, work on doing less of that. If you're addicted to Reddit, Twitter, or pornography, work on doing less of that. Exercise. Spend time in the outdoors. Focus hard on sleep hygiene. Eat less sugar and processed foods.

You can not change all this stuff overnight but if you can take baby steps it will help massively. You will not feel better tomorrow or next week but if you take tiny steps you will feel a tiny bit better in a few months.

I would also highly recommend learning about mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. A lot of dissatisfaction is aversion to a feeling of emptiness that we have to learn to accept.

Again, I'm not trying to dissuade you from getting any sort of help, especially if you're socially isolated (though you mention having friends). I just don't want you to underestimate how much you can help yourself.

Lastly but not least, if you're eating great, exercising, getting natural sunlight, spending meaningful time with good social relationships, sleeping consistently, and moderating your internet usage, and you still feel no energy or interest in anything, you can just calmly accept it. Life "passes" us all by whether we're joyful or interested or not. Sometimes people with passionate interests actually get more problems from those interests than someone who can just calmly accept the moment for what it is. Ask yourself if the interests would make you happier, or if the actual problem is that you are making an imaginary problem out of not being interested in things. Just food for thought!

Sometimes I wonder if there's a "neurodiversity" thing that makes some people more enthusiastic than others. (And of course it's the time of year when people start reporting seasonal affective disorder.)

Once I wondered if my interest levels are affected by how well I'm sleeping. That got me interested in the physical things that affect your mood -- and how serious exercise could flood your brain with generally-uplifting biochemicals. (Though it can also bring you down if you don't also eat enough protein and carbohydrates to fully rejuvenate.)

The last piece of the puzzle is mental -- some people try meditation, but even listening to extremely calming music can have an impact. People have tried "gratefulness" lists or a conscientious positivity practice. Someone once advised me to just do something nice for someone else, and then savor that feeling of having been helpful. (More or less that feeling you get when you see a tiny kitten or a cute animal in the zoo -- and you spontaneously start wishing them well.)

The other thing that causes low-curiosity is burnout. (Just getting out of the house, taking a trip, seeing some people can sometimes help.) Working less, changing fields to a different challenge. Changing cities, changing countries....

I had a clear realization early in life: life has no meaning at all. Nothing really has any meaning. We are just neurons firing, chemical reactions constrained by physical laws.

Later, when I read Buddhism, it says similar things.

So, should we just prepare ourselves for death like the ancient Jains who starved themselves to death because nothing had any meaning?

That would be pretty worthless, innit?

I have discovered a simple, yet, profound truth: "Meaning is what you assign to stuff with stern agency. Nothing else."

You are the sole assigner of meaning, and you do the assigning, and it's your life's mission to stick to it.

I have found meaning in health, self-preservation through earning money, love- romantic and other kinds, parents, dog, learning new things, music, enjoying small things in life, helping others selflessly, and making it a mission to contribute to society as much as possible so maximum number of people can realize such intricacies of the nature of reality.

Yes, I was in your situation before. And I did bounce back. All it took me was being in ICU for 15 days when I was 21, fully conscious but fully paralized and ventilated. And meditations. A lot of it.

(I fully recovered within two months, and currently live a fully healthy life with no medications.)

I’ve found the solution to this problem to be to attack the underlying physiology that is responsible producing these emotions (or lack thereof) without using any form of medication, ESPECIALLY anti-depressants.

Like many of life’s problems, my solution is simple but not easy. I drastically changed my nutrition (strict keto diet), exercise routine (1.5 hours of exercise a day, half of that high-intensity aerobic), disciplined sunlight exposure, and sleep optimization (no screens for 2 hours before bed, earplugs and sleep mask, no alcohol/drugs, 8 hrs minimum, usually get 9)

It sounds like a lot all at once but I found that incrementally adding things worked for me.

I used to contemplate suicide daily for a span of about 2 years and then eventually my feelings subsided naturally. Now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and a lot of the external forms of gratification are coming along with it.

First, like some commenters, I believe you may be depressed. If you have resources to help you, please seek it out to verify. The more personalized (counseling) the better.

Second, any chance you are passing time by watching tv and surfing the internet?

There’s a period of my life I used to watch a lot of tv series and doom scrolling. Looking back, I was depressed with my studies. These mindless activities helped to numb my soul, making life less painful.

Slowly though, I realized the cognitively cheap entertainment was a form of addiction, and that it was robbing me of my creativity and energy.

Third, regarding exercise and diet. Super critical. But! You need to find the right kind that suits you. I highly recommend bouldering. You can do it alone, any time, and there’s a clear and constant progression you can see. Also, people are generally nice and social.

If you don’t care about anything why do you care to be curious?

You see? Ive just found one thing that interests you. It means you’re lying to yourself. You’re telling yourself stories that are simply not true.

So either take your head out of your butt and start deep honest conversation with yourself (and not with ideas from other peoples books, whoever they are).

Or just invest some time in finding a good therapist to work this out.

Or if this doesn’t interest you - find a random one, who would just drug you.

Or it may be a combination of these.

In either case - you should stop looking for a feeling that magically comes to you (this is what drug addicts do), and start looking for a meaning that you define or create for yourself.

I have the opposite problem. Way too much curiosity, someone help me with that.

I think if you have no curiosity, that is ok, but maybe you have something else (love, ambition, power) that you aspire for which requires curiosity to accomplish?

I've answered here (a similar sort of question also posted today): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33396442

For me, service to others keeps me fulfilled: Volunteering, mentoring, and teaching. Doing those things also means I interact with people, and meet new people with interesting viewpoints.

For me it's basically what Michael Keaton's character in bird man covers.

Live so that your trying to impress yourself, not others. If you live to impress others 2 things result, 1 - they become gatekeepers to your happiness and 2 - you end up being surrounded by people that aren't your people. If you live to impress yourself at first you may seem alone but over time others that like what your doing, like you for you will gather around you and those are your people,

I don't know if you are the kind of person who likes to Google research about such issues relating to themselves, but if so, a term to Google for this is anhedonia.

A lot of people that are passionate about things are not content with the status quo. They want to “make a mark” so to speak.

Not to dissuade you from finding passion, but from someone who’s always been passionate about things, it can drive you a little crazy. Not to mention the joy that you speak of is temporary, there is always another hill to climb/ goal to reach

Volunteer somewhere where giving even once moment of compassion means the world to someone else. Foster kittens, birds that strike buildings. Talk to the elderly in homes. Give your time to tutor children from rough households. Feed the homeless.

There is no greater impact, no clearer sense of impact, than starting from ones own neighborhood.

related to that, my sense of joy in life comes from my understanding of what the purpose of life itself is, that is to live in order to contribute the advancement of civilization. that can be acts like you mention, but it can also be supporting my family or raising my kids, or contributing to FOSS or even having a meaningful job.

I went through a very tough phase(2016-19) and was severely depressed due to lack of passion about my work.

The point is these big companies - like G00.gle, MSFTt, others see people as disposable. I found this abhorrent!

I had a high paying work-life. No PASSioñ-FOR-LIFE :(

This state can be gotten out of by just waiting. ThEre. is, NO-other soluutÏonn!:O!;)

-Vipul

Embrace hedonism, try smoking weed.

This may seem like a joke reply but the “at least there’s hedonism to fall back on” is not a bad default strategy while searching for greater joy in life.

The way to joy is Jesus of Nazareth. Partake of the Gospel.

Pleasures are plentiful and transient. Satisfaction can be had in worldly accomplishment, and even philosophy.

Joy under the sun (and beyond) is due neither to the flesh nor the mind, but the soul.

Break your life down to habits. Are you actively pursuing hobbies or just watching videos/theorizing? My guess is you're in the latter camp which is a common problem in modern times.

Find something to take care of or dedicate time teaching someone something they don’t know. Both can be amazing life changing experiences.

Try fasting, for every bad thought; there is a damaged cell that needs to be repaired

Exercise and Diet.

Joy is in the journey, not the destination. You have reached a destination and you are bored of it. Time to find a new journey.

Being needs no justification. Hedonism is bound to leave you jaded. Minimise your possessions. Purge out the old leaven.

My children and my grand children

By switching from "Life owes me..." to "Life is the gift".

My step-mom told me that she came out of a major depression in her 20s by ignoring herself and focusing on what she could do for others to ease their pains (volunteering, etc.).

It seems solid advice since part of the problem with depression in general and your description seems to be the inward focus on yourself...

Also, I'll add we like different things: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”

How about this thought that is outside that false dichotomy.

Life is a curse, but maybe I can make something from it.

We were all happier before we existed. Non-existence had no upside but no downside either (practical or existential), we are burdened with existence and the knowledge and uncertainty it brings. But... how can a curious person not want to see how far they can go? The herculean attempt to transcend ones station will probably end in failure, but... maybe it won't, how interesting would that be?

And after all, let's be intellectually humble, as much as we know/think that this is all meaningless, what if we are wrong? What if everything IS meaningful? What if we ARE the meaning? Who can truly say for certain one way or the other? Only the arrogant would claim to know 100%.

Get weird with it, see what silly shit you can do, maybe your consciousness will drive our von neumann probes, maybe fundemental truths will be discovered in our life time (we are in the middle of an unprecedented technology hockey stick after all. )

I agree, but that's not exactly actionable advice. Any tips on how to get there?

I'd like to try Ketamine therapy but I can't afford it.

Your embedded a false assumption in your summary, which is the source of your problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyRU-0uH2rw

i don't find joy in life. sometimes I get a feeling of purpose, but even this does not bring joy because in many cases it's a sad situation.

Many ordinary people live their lives without great passions and interests. That’s absolutely ok. Not everybody is Feynman, Zornader, Da Vinci or… yes… Hitler. There is no Mein Kampf for everybody.

Curiosity is dying. All that matters are cars.

Cars do kill a lot of cats, therefore less curiosity... I see your reasoning, here. :)

And family. Nothing stronger than family.

And simulated sex for the sexless. Nothing stronger than staring.

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