I've spent months, or rather years pondering life and everything in it. I won't go into the details here, because it really doesn't matter. But, what I've come up with is this:

It is better to just not feel anything... to just exist and nothing more.

The question is, is HOW to stop feeling? When there are only sad, depressing thoughts and regrets to fill your mind, how do you stop feeling anything? I've decided that you can not have happiness without sadness and when there is no more happiness, then what's the point?

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas?

I will say no, if you don't feel you are not living, it is only the hurt and the sadness that makes us enjoy the love the happiness even more. We can't know pleasure if we also don't know pain.

It is learning not to dwell on the depressing put looking always toward the "bright side"

Many years ago, a man named Tom who was doing life in prison once told me that if he had not been arrested no telling what he may have done, and it was in prison that he found his religious faith, and it was that faith that has made his spirit free, and no matter what or where his body was, he has a soul and spirit that is free.

"I will say no, if you don't feel you are not living, it is only the hurt and the sadness that makes us enjoy the love the happiness even more. We can't know pleasure if we also don't know pain."---but if all you know is pain...

"it is learning not to dwell on the depressing put looking always toward the "bright side""--perhaps it is trying to FIND the bright side, ehh?

"... he has a soul and spirit that is free. "-- and that is just about the only thing that is free

But go with me on this... philosophically... if you've known pleasure and pain (love & hate; happiness & saddness, etc.) then why continue to feel anything? Been there, done that, and now it is all sadness and pain, so why continue to feel only that?

I don't think that the answer is 'not feeling' anything. I think the answer lies in how you approach thinking about 'feeling'.

What you’re doing is making subjective judgments about the way you feel and assuming that it's bad. What if you were able to observe your feelings without judgment? What if you were able to just accept them for what they are, neither good not bad.

We are human so we can’t stop feeling. It’s part of the human condition. But we can stop thinking that our thoughts and feelings are ‘us’ and that therefore they control us. They aren’t us because we have the capacity to both observe them and judge them, and, if we wish to do so, we can change how we feel about a particular person or situation.

Happiness and sadness are simply states of mind. They are perceptions that we attribute to our lives and which affect the way we feel.

It’s hard sometimes, particularly if we think things are sad, bad or mad, but we CAN change our perceptions. This is what optimism and pessimism are all about – how we interpret our reality.

The bad times don’t have to last forever, but they will if we believe they will. If you get what I mean!

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Originally Posted by seashell99

I've spent months, or rather years pondering life and everything in it. I won't go into the details here, because it really doesn't matter. But, what I've come up with is this:

It is better to just not feel anything...to just exist and nothing more.

The question is, is HOW to stop feeling? When there are only sad, depressing thoughts and regrets to fill your mind, how do you stop feeling anything? I've decided that you can not have happiness without sadness and when there is no more happiness, then what's the point?

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas?

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It sounds like an emotional vacuum. Really, you could easily have that kind of a life without doing anything at all. You wouldn't have to invest any effort, or risk feeling any pain.

I think if you had it... you wouldn't want it. The living aren't meant to live the life of the dead. You are a living person, and even if you could insulate yourself against all pain, I think you would find that it would suck royal. Life is change and growth. Look at nature! It ain't astroturf out there, it's living grass. It has seasons of dying and turning brown, but "roses will bloom again" and when spring returns, it will be green again. And... as the poem says... "God bless the grass that grows through cement, It's green and it's tender and it's easily bent, But after a while it lifts up its head, For the grass is living and the stone is dead. And God bless the grass."

You have to have faith in a living God who has a reason and a purpose for all things, and put yourself in His hands... even knowing that it won't feel too good sometimes.