How to Have an Existential Crisis
Get born. Your existence precedes your essence, after all! No but for real, get born, ideally to a family that will raise you with (undoubtedly conservative and/or traditional) values that you at some point come to reject.
Drive to a cliff. Stand at edge of cliff. Look to bottom of cliff. Think about your guts splattering all over cliff as you tumble down.
Wonder if you will jump off the cliff. Think “I can’t jump off this cliff.”Think about fate. Think about God. Think about your future. Think about your family and friends’ love for you.
Realize that you actually can jump off the cliff. By “can’t” you just mean that you have been conditioned to believe that any combination of those things makes you feel as though your life has some sense of externally-generated purpose. Ending your life would disrupt that ‘master plan’. Realize there is no master plan. Feel instant, suffocating angst.
Realize you still don’t have to jump off the cliff. If you wanted to you could and nothing would stop you. But you don’t want to. So you don’t. You are totally in control of your own behavior. Killer.
Recognize that this means you are totally free (awesome) and there is no external purpose that gives your life meaning (boo). Feel extreme anxiety and depression based on this fact, yet in the back of your mind feel relieved like you finally have an accurate understanding of reality. Acknowledge that having some kind of normative worldview makes people happier but only in the way that a sheepdog is happy to herd sheep for its master without ever asking why.
Find people who share your new found existential outlook. The first people will be Nietzsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard. The next will be the smart kids from school who major in useless humanities and only wear black. When you’re a big strong grown up existentialist, you can start converting anyone you meet.
Congratulations, your existential crisis is complete. You’re more self-aware then everyone else you know. Your life will never been the same and you’ll probably feel alienated by most of society for your whole life, but, um… at least you’re right?
