So, you’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that life is pointless, huh? Good for you! Nietzsche would give you a polite golf clap if he wasn’t too busy deconstructing Western values and slapping God in the face (oh, and being dead). Here’s the thing: that hollow, sinking feeling in your chest? That’s not an existential death sentence. It’s the fertile ground where all the old junk in your mind goes to rot, and from it, something better will bloom—if you let it.
You see, nihilism gets a bad rap. Everyone’s so fixated on the “nothing matters” part, like it’s some terminal diagnosis for your soul. But Nietzsche wasn’t pointing to an abyss just to throw you in. He wanted you to leap into that darkness, laugh maniacally, and then start building something new. Picture Minecraft vibe.
What if we stopped viewing nihilism as the monster under the bed and started seeing it for what it really is—a fresh start, a creative revolution on an individual scale?
Let’s be real: there are plenty of beliefs and values you’re probably still clinging to, and they’re holding you back. Think about it—how much of what you believe is a reflection of you, and how much of it is just hand-me-downs from society? We’ve all got these frameworks that were built for us, not by us. What values do you hold on to that are keeping you in place? What beliefs stop you from fully exploring life in new ways?
It’s time to torch those old ideas like last season’s wardrobe. And yeah, discomfort is part of the deal. But guess what? It’s a good discomfort. Destruction, in this case, is an act of liberation. You’re ripping apart the structures that society built for you, and in their place, you’re free to build new ones—ones that lead to real freedom and fulfillment. The pain of tearing down those old frameworks? Totally worth it. Because on the other side is the life you actually want to live, not the one someone told you you’re supposed to.
For me, building new frameworks is an evergreen project. It’s not like you blow everything up once and you’re done. It’s a constant cycle of tearing down, rebuilding, re-evaluating. The trick? Start small. Take this morning, for example. What were you dreading? Work? A conversation? Another soul-crushing Zoom meeting? Ask yourself why. That’s the beginning of deconstructing your life, piece by piece. Once you know what’s making you miserable, you can start dismantling the systems that support it.
And here’s the thing—this isn’t some grand philosophical journey you have to map out in one sitting. You don’t need a five-year plan for creating meaning in your life. You don’t even need a five-day plan. Just start where you are. Acknowledge that what you’ve believed up until now has mostly been inherited from others, and that’s okay. But now it’s your turn to decide what stays and what goes. Today, right now, you have the freedom to start redetermining what you want.
The abyss isn’t going to swallow you whole. In fact, it’s waiting for you to fill it with something new. You get to decide what that is, and it’s going to be a whole lot better than the empty beliefs you were handed.