Every so often I get plagued with a horrible feeling of loneliness and emptiness, like nothing really matters. Nobody can really be trusted, nothing is truly certain, life is intrinsically cruel, you know the drill. I do sincerely believe it comes from a heightened awareness of our own mortality and the fleetingness of existence. If you ever encounter me in a state of melancholy, it’s not because I flunked my exams or fought with my parents or broke up with my girlfriend- it’s because the world as we know it is but a mere flicker in the space-time fabric of the limitless expanse of universe, and frankly that sucks balls.

I’m not actually feeling this way right now, but I felt like thinking about it because it’s always near-impossible to grapple with it when you’re stricken. I feel absolutely worthless during such junctures and usually resort to sending out mass messages to my friends who usually give me all the responses I need ranging from “That’s messed up, man. Wanna meet up for cigarettes and beer?” to “Lol” or “take a long walk off a short plank you emo fuck, problem solved”. While I do love my friends to bits, it doesn’t really help when you already know what they’re going to say. (I really should save my friends the trouble, and the free outgoing messages that I always run out of)

The funny thing is, all of us in the world who feel this way KNOW that we are not alone in this. If there were a “I Feel So Alone!” club, everyone who joins will sit together and… feel alone. (By the way, I just did a search on Facebook and found that there are over 500 groups with almost nobody in them that are related to feeling alone. It’s so self-serving and ironic that people create groups to feel alone in instead of looking for existing ones to join)

Finally though I believe I’ve found the most simple and elegant solution to this conundrum. The unspoken constant in this problem is not the universe, but ME. We establish that we are intelligent and capable of reason, so we self-importantly go on to postulate that we must have purpose and are distraught when we discover that there is none. The simple solution to avoid feeling the misery of being inconsequential is to help others instead.

Service is the solution! Give it a shot. The next time you feel miserable, man it up and realise that other people have had it worse. Then go out and help someone in any way you can. It is extremely therapeutic, and there is immense joy in helping others. Why is this so? I’d certainly like to explore the matter, but perhaps at a later juncture.

I will report my findings the next time I feel such crippling melancholy. Although logically speaking, if the solution does work the way I think it should, then I should not have to reach such a stage in the first place.