God

People you love will likely die before you do and there's nothing you can do about it. You will one day die and it's only a matter of time. There's such a vibrant world full of colour and noises here but so many people have passed and are gone, so many people will one day come to us. How do you deal with this? What books helped you deal with this?

Anna Karenina

Just keep going.

The stranger

Keep going.

this

Read the poem Thanatopsis desu

no book will tell you anything about your question.

have a kid. create art. fall in love.

Just bee yourself.

I used to think like you because I couldn't understand how supposedly intelligent people could hold any theistic beliefs at all, even though my family were Catholic. I was a bit embarrassed for them desu, and was assuredly an atheist - naturally this led to the sort of nihilism and depression that came through in your post.

Then I actually started to engage with serious theology, and realised that the arguments for the existence of God aren't so stupid after all - in fact, some of them are pretty compelling. I'm an agnostic now, but I embrace the uncertainty and act as though God exists. I feel much happier now - it's given me an excuse to start enjoying again some of the things that I had lost the ability to enjoy when I saw them from the atheistic perspective of a dumb animal just trying to propagate (love, friendship, connection with nature).

who cares lol

Sincerely, lovecraft.

>both the idea of a temporary existence and a permanent existence scare the shit out of me
Oh this is fun.

...

Not sure how this would help someone in OP's situation.

Existence is alien and pain

I don't know why it feels that way. It seems weird to feel that existence is alien when it was necessary for me to ever think that way or feel that feeling to begin with.

Also to say its pain makes no sense either, since no matter what conclusion I come to dwelling on the pain and sadness of being alive seems as pointless as my existence currently.

Think I'm going to go see a shrink, I worry my anxieties are clouding my judgment and forcing me to believe negative delusions.

son. Comprehend your nothingness, and the universal craziness. Looking for sense in silent black voids at the mercy of 4th dimensional beasts as they slowly limber by, you need to see all this life and death and time from a different perspective.

You should read lovecraft

I've been reading through his collections of works and have really been enjoying it. I try to read a story before bed.

Gilgamesh.
Then the Iliad.
Then the Bible.

life isn't so great

Find a wife and have children as all of your forebears have done before you.

People in older times didn't have to worry about the crushing effects of a collapsing society and a post-christian west. They had a traditional nuclear family, a traditional relationship, lived in countries with fairly socially conservative approaches to things and they could generally see a future for themselves and their children. Not that they would worry about existential questions anyway, that seems to be a very modern problem - amoung 'normies' anyway.

>so many people have passed and are gone
You live on in your deeds and accomplishments. And in your children, and their children etc

>People you love
no such thing lol
and I care only for people who give me money, so them dying before me or them stopping giving me money concerns me more.

When you die, you will repeat your life instantly in the same exact fashion. There's no wait in between from your personal perspective. You're literally here forever.

dumb child

I find it hard to believe this, user.
I don't really plan on having children, though. It's kind of because i like men and also i seem to find it hard to accomplish anything. I always feel like i won't.
Thank you.
Thanks fren
I have read so much of Lovecraft but i don't see how the newfound knowledge of the beasts is positive when the knowledge is death.
truly a wild ride.
I have had a similar experience to this but i feel like the euphoria of finding god is wearing off, somehow. I had come to accept many things but i guess there's still a part of me that does not accept.
I try, fren, i try.
thanks for recs and support, frens. You're good living beings across the internet.

Interestingly enough, it's the opposite for me; theism / idealism has given me the existentialism that the world is some sort of construct, a rejection of reality. If it's god, then the world's beauty is not 'natural' and just feels like the play thing of one being, regardless if that being is good or bad. And conversely if the fate of humanity is dependent on pure natural emergence then that prompts the nihilism you mentioned; as if the meaning hold internally is also nothing but a lie, and therefore our existence is just a gory object.

Hello friend, it sounds like you should read Augustine's Confessiones