The novelty and transience of it.
The last few years of my life have just been a beating :(. I am not happy living in the midwest, but I moved here to be with my husband (who I love very much :D) and we both want to leave. I moved away from my home in Montana to find more opportunity here, which has worked for him, but not for me :(. Currently, I am in an intense limbo and vascillate between excitement and depression. My husband and I are just trying to make it through day-by-day. However, I vaguely remember times when things were better and I think that we will get there again, but it is so hard right now. It would take a full page to list out all the insane circumstances that contribute to this limbo, so I am trying to look at the positives, but it is hard to shake the fear of all the uncertainty. Right now, I just don’t know what my answer to this question is 
.
As bad as things can get, at least there is a chance of them getting better while you are breathing. When you are down in the cold, cold, ground your options are pretty limited.
I think about this type of thing fairly often. As to what’s so great about existence? I’d say those fleeting visits of the happy chemicals. (Not drugs but the chemicals in our bodies that make us feel happy.) Whether it be chocolate milkshakes, sex, paying off a car, (which I just did two weeks ago 
) or learning something cool.
I’m a dreamer and I like to ponder things. Just to sit on my couch staring out the window at the trees with no tv, radio or any other distraction gets the happy chemicals dancing around in me.
I also like learning things. And here is the part of existing that pisses me off. I will not live long enough to get the answers to some of my questions and that makes my happy chemicals pissed off and they start puching each other in the throat. 
I want to know if aliens exist.
I want to know whats going on in that galaxy over there. And what do those sentient beings think about our galaxy. Are we just a white trash trailor park to them or a nice suburban neighborhood with good schools and shops.
I want to know what the edge of the universe looks like.
I want to know how we have evovled and what we will look like 3 million years from now.
Oh well.
Death is the price of admission for this miracle of existance and that seems like a fair price to me.
So, I guess what is so great about existence is existing.
Yesterday I took my kids to the creek to meet some friends, and we spent a couple of hours splashing around, finding crawdads, frogs, and minnows, watching the birds that have built nests under the walk-bridge, and generally enjoying being out in a creek.
In the evening, I took my older daughter to the observatory in the park for a field trip with a bunch of other kids. We looked at Venus and Saturn, at two galaxies, and a globular cluster. It was amazing. We sat out in the starwatching pit and looked at the constellations, and coveted the volunteer’s skypen (I am getting one of those!).
When there’s so much to enjoy in the world–for nothing–who could not want to exist? (Not to mention that the cherries are ripening on my mom’s cherry tree.)
Those who do not exist are not able to ponder the pros and cons of not existing. Even if one determines that existence sucks and not existing is a preferential state, one at least has the ability to make the determination.
I was thinking the same. Why wonder about non-existence? It’s not really even a matter of wondering what non-existence would be like. It just isn’t. It’s Nothing, in the most elemental sense of the word. Life may not always be great, or even easy, but what else is there?
Ending it.
Now there is a big hassle not worth the effort.
That’s pretty ominous, GuanoLad. He’s right, too - suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It’s a serious killer in this country, though.
Is it possible that your lack of joy is the result of depression that began in childhood? There might be some stuff buried in your past that could be dealt with.
I was feeling flip (and depressed) earlier this morning, I sincerely hope you’ll take a look at these issues, at the possibility that something solvable is standing in the way of your happiness.
Joe Pantoliano…was he the one that tasted the steak and decided he’d rather be in the Matrix than (what was it called? Sanctuary?) in the submarine thing eating mush?
Obviously I’m not well versed in the Matrix trivia… 
As to your second statement, sorry I was being smartassed there. Honestly, I’ve been in some real “hurtin’” places in my life. I spent about 7 months in a severe depression, well not the whole 7 months, that’s about how long it took to finally recognize that I was actually clinically depressed, to seek professional help, and for a brief spate of meds and some counseling to kick in.
First and only time in my life that “not to be” had ever crossed my mind. I’ve spent most of my 48 years being a reasonably cheerful (with occasional grump attacks) person. The depression was pretty shocking to me and because I’d always been a happy-go-lucky person, I did NOT recognize it for what it was.
“not to be” was tempting for a moment or two, thanks to the agonizing emotional pain I found myself in (relationship based depression, or rather END of a relationship that I didn’t want to end depression). But even in the worst of it, I knew deep down that it was temporary (WAY deep down, it sure didn’t seem as if it would ever end).
I can’t say that contentment, or happiness-wise I’m where I really want to be right now. I’m what I call “reasonably okay”, but I know that it’s a situational thing, (something that I can change when I’m ready and brave enough to step into the scary old world of dating again), and that, as cliche as it is, problems are temporary but that final solution is not.
Which did you do 2 weeks ago? Sex, chocolate milkshake, or paying off a car? Or all three at once?
I have no intention of committing suicide, and I’m not suggesting that’s a viable option.
But if existing is not a pleasant experience, there aren’t any alternatives other than “get over it” or “end it”.
I intend to get past any miserable feeling I might be experiencing, as I always have, but when I’m in a slump like this, it does make you wonder how people can accept some of the truly miserable things in life that surround and affect them.
I’m about to leave my job, and in fact I’m looking forward to it very much, but there’s a big unknown beyond that as I have nothing set up to go into yet.
Some of the reasons I’m leaving the job are the reasons I’m feeling down. Beyond that, wider issues like how horrible people can be, how tragic some current events are, how pessimistic a lot of the future is being forecast as.
It’s enough to cause me some significant despair.
I think I should apologize for my post in this thread. When I started it, there were only two posts. It took me an hour and a half to write mine, by which time the thread had taken on a decidedly different tone. Neither the OP nor anyone else has seen fit to comment on my experiences, which shows that they seem trivially out of place here, what with talk of suicidal (or not) depression and hopelessess. Been there, done that, got over it. I thought maybe you wanted some proof of there being something to be joyful about, but you are not in that place currently. I hope you get there someday.
What I am seeing is that other people find joy where I do not, and have had life experiences that I have not, and never will have.
I’m not in a terrible place, I’m just in a bit of a down state, and while here I saw such horrible stuff around me, I thought - “How do people get past this? What do they see in life that makes it worthwhile?” and wondered what people would say. Fishbicycle, your post was very helpful, and exactly what I expected to see here - that there are often times when people will feel at their lowest, and yet there is something that makes us keep going, in the hope of it working itself out and getting better.
It seems to be that change is what makes the difference, so as I’m about to make a change in my life, I hope it will be a positive one.
It’s always baffled me that people could keep on going in places where true tragedy is rampant, like parts of the Middle East or Africa.
Of course I know better than to think that our material lives are making us significantly happier, but I couldn’t figure out what enables them to maintain some sense of hope, given that their daily lives are so difficult.
It might be religion, that would explain a lot of their choices.
But I think it’s also children. Children are incredible joy generators. Even as infants they put off waves of “life juice” without even trying – and then toddlers? Pre-schoolers? Mine absolutely MUST run and giggle for significant periods every day. It’s pretty contagious.
Good luck with your changes, GuanoLad!
I still think watching the news is bad for us.
fishbicycle, I liked your post, too.
I think this is good.
I have had the kind of life that most people can’t even comprehend, and certainly no-one would choose. To say I’ve struggled a lot would be an understatement.
Through it all, though, I have come to realize one thing as a constant. If I am not finding joy anywhere, if I am wondering why I bother with all the neverending hassles, then *I am doing something wrong *.
I have made many changes. One is to choose not to expose myself unneccesarily to bad things I have no control over. I personally do not watch the news, I do not read the newspaper. If I hear of an issue that bothers me, I ponder what I can do to make a difference, I do it, then I move on and let it go. If I come across something that brings me a moment of happiness, I figure out how to have more of that in my life. Sometimes it’s small things - sitting in the backyard with hubby for a chat after the kiddo is asleep, rather than indoors. Others are bigger changes, like going back to school to pursue what I enjoy.
We can’t change most of the bad or unpleasant things that happen in life, but we can choose to squeeze every ounce out of the good times.
On the other hand, you never hear anyone who doesn’t exist complain about their non-existence.
As I always say, only half-jokingly, Happiness is where expectations and reality meet. Changing reality is a complicated affair, often out of our hands. Changing expectations, though, only takes a bit of willpower.
My adolescence and universtity years where difficult crap. Nothing that would make a TV miniseries, but I was continually let down by life and circumstance. Until I realized that being let down by things was mostly my fault. I was expecting things that I knew wouldn’t be coming my way.
I am currently much more detached (in a good way). I wait for things to come my way and try darned hard to find what is it that is good about it.
I had a photo book printed with the pics of my kids’ first years. All pics are of happy moments, as it if often the case. The last page reads “there were also sad, scary and troublesome moments, none were worth a picture”.
They are just part of the deal. When you order something by mail, you get a bunch of cardboard and foam peanuts and plastic bags with ties and all kinds of crap. But you are not brought down by those, are you? You barely see them while you get to the item you ordered and that makes you happy.
Not too long ago, I had the cleaning shift in a butchery. 4 hours hosing down pinkish disgustingness from meat cutting machines for $5.25 an hour (at least it wasn’t federal minimum wage, right?). Nobody wanted that job. Rotation on that job was ridiculous. I turned it into my zen moment and enjoyed it so much that my boss started doing surprise inspections to find out what the heck I was really doing.
I could bore you with dozens of similar examples from my life, but you get the gist of it, I hope. What I don’t like I take as a given and stop trying to change. What little I like, I celebrate and embrace. And there is always something, no matter how little.
Beer, good cheeseburgers, sex. Not in that order per say 
For a less Epicurean answer, agape makes life hella sweet.