My happiness is the only reason for me finding good meaning about me as a person and finding good meaning in this life. Without that, there would be nothing good about me as a person or anything good in my life. I can just use my thoughts alone to perceive me and my life being good even without my pleasure. But these are nothing more than neutral (neither good or bad) thoughts and that would not make me or my life anything good at all regardless of how much I help others and do great things in my life. Therefore, since I no longer have any pleasure 24/7 due to my anhedonia (emotional numbness) in which there are never any brief moments of pleasure to any degree whatsoever, this is why there is no longer anything good about me as a person or my life. My dream in life was to be a composer and I was in the process of learning how to compose. My dream was to be a great composer through my pure pleasure alone because, to me, that is the only thing that defines someone as being great. As a matter of fact, the fact that I had the ability to experience feelings of pleasure so great and profound, this would enable me to be a really great composer who would be able to channel those feelings in creating emotionally powerful compositions. Feelings of depression and anhedonia are not classified as feelings at all. They are the taking away of your pleasure and other emotions. Therefore, they are not anything to tap into and channel in creating any type of emotionally powerful composition. Instead, they make you a lesser person and a lesser composer who can only create compositions through intelligence alone which would be nowhere near great and emotionally powerful as opposed to if you were to create compositions through your profound feelings of pleasure. In other words, even the greatest composers in history who had depression and/or lack of pleasure could of been even better if they had their full pleasure to tap and channel into. But I have given up being a composer right now since my only goal in becoming a composer was to tap into and channel my feelings of pleasure I valued so much and create many different types of music through my pure pleasure alone. Creating music through my suffering is NOT what I want to do and doing so would only make me feel that much worse. To me, music is all about enjoyment and creating music through your pure pleasure alone. I have given up being a composer because me choosing to become a composer brings me nothing but anger and frustration now since I no longer have any pleasure to tap into and channel. I refuse to be the biological robot in a world that absolutely calls for our experience of love and pleasure (which would be the emotional world of composing) who does nothing but creates music through having no pleasure. I will not channel even my own feelings of anger and frustration in creating music because, again, that only makes me feel worse and is not what I wanted to do at all anyway. Now, if, let's pretend, that I were the greatest composer in the world right now and composed masterpieces, this would actually be the worst moment of my life. This is because these would be the greatest pieces of music I have written and this would be the greatest moment of my life and I am not even allowed to enjoy it to any degree at all. Sure, composing music for other people and bringing them pleasure is good. But music is a very personal emotional thing to me and I must, therefore, experience good feelings from my music. Otherwise, me being a composer is completely pointless and detrimental as it only brings me nothing but rage and frustration knowing that I cannot experience any pleasure from my own compositions whatsoever as well as that I don't have any good feelings to even tap into and channel in creating my compositions which would be much more emotionally powerful since they were created through my emotions (my pleasure) rather than them being created without such feelings. Since my personal experience of pleasure was so profound and meaningful to me in the past, then I absolutely cannot just simply ignore this and choose to view other things in life as something greater. This is because I reject doing so and reject being the lesser person with a lesser life as a result. Now if you or anyone else here has found other things in life of greater value than your pleasure (which would include finding greater things in life than even your own feelings of love), then you obviously have not experienced these feelings nearly as profound or meaningful as I have to know that they are truly the only good and greatest things in life. Now if you can never fully recover your lost love and pleasure, then at least you have spent your entire life by being the superior human being who has tried to fully recover these things. If you are going to say something such as that living your life trying to fully recover these lost feelings instead of accepting this loss and moving on is a wasted life, it's not a wasted life. Like I said before, feelings of love and pleasure are the only greatest aspects of me as a human being and are the only things that make my own personal life worth living. So for me to abandon them and instead live my life for other reasons besides trying to fully recover them, THAT would be the wasted life for me. Finally, one might say that I am still a good person since I still care and help others anyway. However, to me, someone who helps and cares for others is no better or worse than someone who is a psychopath and kills others. The only thing that makes you a better or lesser person is your amount of pleasure in life regardless of who you are as a person. Since I have lesser pleasure, that makes me a lesser person than even Hitler himself who has more pleasure in life (although there may be moments where he definitely had bad moments in his life from harming others). The reason why I say this is because, again, my personal experience of pleasure says this since it was so profound and meaningful to me and there is nothing in life that can ever take place of that regardless of how much I try and change my attitude and other things. I refuse to even try anyway since that would make me the lesser human being with a lesser life as I stated earlier in my writing.
Matt, sorry, but you are being an idiot. I'm not even going to pretend I read all of that, but that last bit is just stupid. You need to make some changes in your life.
So what's the problem? Why can't you pursue pleasure while composing music? Is a life of pleasure seeking off limits to you somehow?
There's no one that feels pleasure all of the time and to think that way is totally wrong. Everyone has their ups and downs and many people are depressed or feel anxiety from time to time. If your feeling like a "lesser" person perhaps you might need to see a psychologist to find out the reasons that made you feel that way. There are medications that can help you overcome that feling of being a "lesser" person but only if you allow them to help and then do as they ask.
This would be because nothing in life can bring back my ability to experience pleasure to any degree whatsoever other than medication, therapy, and possibly electric convulsive therapy which is a shock to the brain.
Well, there you go. To happiness and beyond! But seriously, get treatment or stop whining. No one here can help you, so there's no point in telling us this stuff. Good luck, man.
Being a musician/songwriter myself - I find that expressing my feelings in music brings me pleasure. It can be a way out of depression. I asked another songwriter friend why he felt there are so may sad songs compared to happy songs. His response was that happy is fairly one dimensional, while there are a thousand shades of sad.
That's the most bizarre thing I've heard in weeks. Homo sapiens is a social species. We rely on each other to build a community that works... one which is greater than the sum of the individuals who comprise it. Psychopaths do just the opposite, by harming other people in various ways: physically, emotionally, economically, etc. A psychopath is definitely worse than a composer. Even in an efficient, well-run community with advanced technology, a psychopath is a drain on the community because of the resources we have to divert to the effort of preventing him from harming us and the community as a whole--not to mention keeping him alive and healthy--if we prefer not to practice capital punishment. You sound like a textbook example of a sociopath. I hope you're under a doctor's care. Or perhaps you're just pulling our chain.
If I could introduce a slight sidetrack, once you feel a certain satisfactory dexterity on an instrument (as I feel I have achieved on the midi keyboard), how do you, mentally, feel comfortable hitting the record button? I always feel great when I'm just messing around and enjoying my new found ability but when I start to think about hitting the record button and creating something for digital download, I always think "I'm not ready.... I don't have everything I need.... ..I'm going to mess up a lot and it's going to be a chore. ...i don't sound as good as I think I am yet...There's too many people interrupting me...", etc, etc, etc...on and on... How do you get past that? I just procrastinate on recording anything because I think there will be just too many times I will be bad than I'll be good and it will drive me nuts trying to get something worth preserving...And I don't want to drive myself nuts.
One more thing I would like to add is that some people might tell me to accept a lifelong loss of pleasure that might never recover or even fully recover and to just be at peace and content with my life of anhedonia. These would be the pathetic and inferior human beings for having little to no value towards my feelings of pleasure that I value so greatly and I refuse to stoop down to their level. I refuse to be the inferior human being who accepts this loss. I am not inferior. I am instead a powerful human being for not accepting this loss and trying to fully recover it. Therefore, the closest thing to making me a good person despite my loss of pleasure is for not accepting this loss and living my life in trying to fully recover it. The only way for accepting this loss to make me a good person would be if this acceptance would actually fully bring back my ability to experience pleasure. However, if it turns out that I can never recover my pleasure, then I will actually be utterly inferior and me and my life would no longer have any value at all this time regardless of what attitude I have or what things I do in my life. So the only superior human beings are those who tell me to not accept this loss and try to fully recover it who have compassion towards my loss of pleasure and have immense value towards my pleasure. Therefore, I will specifically seek out these types of people who I deem as superior and cast out the rest (the opposite) who will be deemed as utterly inferior.
Just one more thing I would like to add in addition to the previous post I just made (which I want for you to respond to both that post and this post) is that you can compose music that has dark, gothic, and tragic emotion to it through pure pleasure alone anyway (the pleasure of dark, gothic, and tragic things). You can create these types of music through pure pleasure alone and they can be just as good (and even better) than if you created them through your suffering and despair. You can also grow as a person just as good and even better under the right circumstances through pure pleasure alone without any suffering or despair in your life since the brain is something you can change at will and you can be a better compassionate person at any given personal level and such through just changing your attitude and through other things in life besides suffering, despair, and a lack of pleasure.
Im not saying this in jest or to make fun of you, but you sound to me as if you could benefit from seeing a therapist or counselor. Seriously, please see someone about the way you are feeling, you will eventually feel better for doing so. Good luck Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Matt, you still haven't explained to me what is stopping you from pursuing pleasure. Who or what is stopping you from seeking pleasure?
I will prove right here how you can grow as a person and be better in other ways without suffering, despair, and a lack of pleasure in your life. There are people who go through a great amount of suffering and despair and yet, they do not become more compassionate or become a better person in any other sense. As a matter of fact, they can become less compassionate even towards others who suffer the same things and they instead take out their suffering on other people. This would be because they have refused to change their attitude in becoming a better person and have refused to become better in any other sense through other means in life besides suffering, despair, and a lack of pleasure. Therefore, since this holds true, the opposite would hold true as well in that people who have very little suffering and despair in their lives can change their attitude in becoming a better person and better in other ways through other means in life besides suffering, despair, and a lack of pleasure.
