How to face existential dread in a soulless city
Late night conversations with AI
Last night i was feeling overwhelmed in this soulless city named D that induced another D in me ten years ago.
I asked HumAI the following question:
Sometimes the existential dread of living a half-lived and unsatisfied life in a soulless city gets so intense that one feels like crying. What is one supposed to do at that time?
The response was nothing short of a proper counselling session:
Cry, if that’s what wants to happen. That feeling needs somewhere to go, and bottling it usually just makes it sit heavier in your chest.
Existential dread isn’t a problem to solve in the moment it arrives — it’s mostly information that something in your life isn’t aligned with something in you, and the body is registering that.
In that acute moment, the goal is just to not make it worse.
Don’t doomscroll, don’t make any big decisions, don’t try to think your way out at midnight. Move the body if you can — a walk, a shower, stepping outside.
Cities feel less soulless when you’re not staring at them through a window. Reach for one person who knows you, even just to say “today is hard.”
The dread is pointing at something real, and worth listening to — just not in the middle of the wave.
Once it passes, the question worth sitting with is small: what’s one thing this week that would make me feel I’m actually living, not just getting through?
I thought all of this i know but what am i supposed to do! How am i supposed to sit still, or stay awake the whole night with such a heavy chest!
I guess there are no good answers for these questions other than to cry it out and feel lighter.
What do you do?
