/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11817800]

I think I'm having an existential crisis atm
>Driving
>Turning left on my green arrow
>As I enter the intersection I look to my left and see a car speeding down street right towards me
>Blows through the red light and must have missed me a hair
I can't stop thinking about how close it was. How close my life was to being over.
Is that what it would have been? A couple years here that the majority of sucked, and then I would have died? I would have left behind nothing. I haven't even been able to express my feelings to the girl I've been in love with for over a year.
I went to McDonalds after and starred in disbelief at the workers there, working their asses off to feed a bunch of other people who don't care. I couldn't stop imaging when I used to work at a grocery store and I'd work so hard I'd sweat and feel like death afterwards, what if I had gotten in a car crash and died after one of those shifts?
And I can't tell if I'm happy I didn't get hit or disappointed.

I saw my brother when I got home and he was talking to me normally being jokey and I was trying to keep up, but it felt like I was drunk and trying to hide it.
I don't know what to do, what the fuck should I read for this?

[Anonymous No.11817864]

someone please help me

[Anonymous No.11817870]

You'll be okay. Sleep will wash most of the trauma away. It wasn't your time.

[Anonymous No.11817877]

>>11817800
>what the fuck should I read for this?
you don't read, you write

[Anonymous No.11817883]

Throw everything away. You don't need it anymore. Take off all your clothes and go naked into the jungle.

You stand at a doorway. God alone knows what you might do. Don't squander the opportunity for a truly meaningful transformation.

Meditate on your live. Start from the present and work your way back. Think on every sentient creature you've wronged. When this is done, you'll be free.

[Anonymous No.11817895]

>>11817883
>Take off all your clothes and go naked into the jungle.

I plan on doing this shit if I ever decide to an hero.

[Anonymous No.11817902]

>>11817800
phil hale is based

[Anonymous No.11817916]

>>11817902
One of my favorite paintings right here

[Anonymous No.11817967]

Read the Stoics

[Anonymous No.11818029]

>>11817800
What do you do?
>start with the Greeks, of course

[Anonymous No.11818130]

If you die, you won't know you are dead. You should actually be more worried if you end up paraplegic or a vegetable.

[Anonymous No.11818147]

>>11817800
Don't read, instead now whilst it's fresh, write about it: what you were doing, the incident, and then this bit just now but more in depth. I like where it's going

[Anonymous No.11818160]

get a bong hit transplant and listen to wavves

[Anonymous No.11818162]

Dostoyevsky

[Anonymous No.11818220]

Don't worry it will pass, use this experience to live with content in your hearth. As long as you are content you will die with a smile on your face.

[Anonymous No.11818276]

>>11817800
>>11817864

The Gospel of Thomas.

[Anonymous No.11818295]

Hard Rain Falling

[Anonymous No.11818412]

>>11817800
Sounds like me a few years ago. Only difference being I didn't have a near-death encounter but watched a copious amounts of gore videos and it started getting to me so much that I actually found myself in the same position. Got over it though by learning to cherish my time and appreciate the beauty in something as simple as a range of clouds in the clear afternoon. Now here I sit as the sun rises and sweeps slowly across my wall to limn my new day in fresh and glorious light. How grateful I am to be alive!

Anyway I think you should keep writing.

[Anonymous No.11818488]

>>11818160
This, but unironically.
Life doesn't make sense on its own.
You need to chill out a little, shore yourself up, and stop taking it so seriously. You can rest assured that life isn't taking you as seriously as you're taking it.
Once you've calmed down a little, you can figure out what you want to do and why. You might not do this all at once. Sometimes our path is revealed to us by looking at only the steps directly behind us and directly in front of us.

[Anonymous No.11818749]

Read this.

[Anonymous No.11818794]

>>11817800

Those are the moments that make you feel alive, man. It's laughing in the face of death, the soldier's smile. You gotta learn to enjoy it.

[Anonymous No.11818850]

>>11818749
How is that going to help?
Good book regardless

[Anonymous No.11818910]

>>11817895
I hope you fucking bring bug spray if you do because that sounds fucking uncomfortable.

Also, if it makes you feel better, humans are sheep and can’t really be that serious for very long, most of the time. You’ll probably forget about this near-death instance like the rest of the sheep. A fair amount of the NPCs I’ve talked to can even report their own near-death-instances. You get surprised and seriously consider your life and its purpose for a second, then you forget. Unless you try not to forget. If you try not to forget, good luck. You’ll rapidly start to find the other sheeple insane and somewhat annoying, and they might start to think the same of you.

[Anonymous No.11819053]

>>11818276

>The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will be."
>Jesus said, "Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death."

[Anonymous No.11819491]

>>11817800
no attachment is permanent, if how good person was feeling before their demise determines a life well lived (in your eyes), then everyone who crashes while high has reached peak enlightenment

[Anonymous No.11819841]

This one time, a really big piece of ice dropped from the roof 1m ahead of me, right where my head would be. Had I left uni 1s earlier, I'd be brain damaged or fucking dead. I was the edgiest retard on the planet at the time so I jerked myself off thinking I'm so cool for not giving a shit, but years later it really makes me think senpai

[Anonymous No.11820564]

>There was a rich man who had much money. He said, 'I shall put my money to use so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouse with produce, with the result that I shall lack nothing.' Such were his intentions, but that same night he died. Let him who has ears hear.

[Anonymous No.11822726]

>>11817800
I've been a cunt hair away from being run over by a train on three separate occasions throughout my life, and every time it was out of dumb luck I wasn't. Every now and then (always when I lay in bed) the memory descends on me out of nowhere and I want to knee myself in the teeth for being so stupid. So yes, it's pretty common for near death experiences to change the way you feel about yourself and life in general.
For death and its meaning, I don't know if it will help but here's a horribly translated quote from Pasolini for you OP:
>Death does determine life... Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and myth.

[Anonymous No.11822759]

>>11818910

[Anonymous No.11822873]

>>11817800
Had a similar experience once. How can I turn it in a short story? Not meme answers please

[Anonymous No.11822887]

>>11822873
>Gives no details or even context
>"Not meme answers please"
You get what you pay for, bucko!

[Anonymous No.11822919]

>>11822887
Ok, you're right. A sort of hurricane (not like the one that reach the coasts of America, it was much smaller) hit the town by the sea where I used to go to vacation with my family. It came abruptly the people wasn't prepared so everybody rushed to theor own car to leave the beach. The hurricane came and our car slitted and me and my family almost crushed. The hurricane was pretty potent too, it eradicated some trees.
Anyway, that was the same summer my dad died while working abroad in northern Europe. It still feels wierd

[Anonymous No.11822928]

>>11817800
Read Kierkegaard obviously. Sickness Unto Death is all about despair, which is essentially what you’re talking about though formulated in Christian language

[Anonymous No.11822986]

>>11822919
I'm confused, did you mean "Our car swerved and my family almost crashed" or "Our car was carried aloft by the hurricane and my family (standing outside of the car) was almost crushed by it".
If you don't mind talking about it, how did your old man die? It's not like the objective facts matter for a short story, you are not writing a police report after all, but from what you say I imagine a contrast between your family's first brush with death and, well, the following one. There is certainly an interesting contrast between the enviromental catastrophe and the quiet, personal catastrophe of loss.

[Anonymous No.11823040]

>>11822986
Nono, it rained like hell and the car swerved. He drowned in a pool that he cleaned as a job. See, we're polish but we have emigrated to italy, and when here there were no jobs to be found (usually during summer) my dad used to go to Germany or the Netherlands (where he died).

[Anonymous No.11823054]

>>11822986
>>11823040
This also happened 6 years ago, I was 11 and my memories are very blurried. I'd like to describe the near car crashed but I can't, sadly
I can only recall it vaguely

[Anonymous No.11823061]

>>11817800
Try growing older.
On a lighter note, these traffic light captchas are killing me

[Anonymous No.11823122]

>>11817967
Seconding this

[Anonymous No.11823127]

>>11823040
>>11823054
Well, you are in luck: there's endless wealth of POV reference material for the situation you are describing on youtube. If it can't freshen up your memory, at least it could give you clues for how to set the scene and tone.
https://youtu.be/i-JJnfWb7QU
https://youtu.be/nddkiXuM4Ag look at all that lovely flying debris
Although a story is not only about what happened, but how it felt (of course not simply saying "I was so happy" or whatever). There's this poem called "Black ice and rain" by can't-remember-the-name but you can also find it on youtube, and it describes the scene of a car crash in very few lines but the things the writer chose to leave in were vivid and personal enough.
Have you written anything before? At seventeen I loved everything I wrote and then revisting it months later wanted to burn it in shame and reading it ten years later wanted to set myself on fire.

[Anonymous No.11823151]

>>11823127
Yep, I wrote a story inspired by junot Diaz. Yeah, yeah, I know that he's considered an hack here , but his short stories are brilliant, and kinda resonated with me (also, I discovered drowned because of the /lit/ wiki page)
It was about a partially true story about this girl whose brain has been fryed by drugs and how shitty the town I live in is

[Anonymous No.11823154]

>>11823151
I took me a year to write and when I tried to read I still can't help but to change some things

[Anonymous No.11823165]

>>11823154
Yeah, it's always like that.

[Anonymous No.11823178]

>>11817800
Talk to a therapist mate. You're doing the while black and white thinking and catastrophising. No amount of philosophy will help as much a a good therapist and one CBT session. It'll help you recognise those patterns of thinking and combat them. I too have escaped death by a hair many years ago and while it was happening, under the certainty of imminent death, I was smiling and relieved in a hysterical sort of way. See a therapist.

[Anonymous No.11823183]

>>11818276
what the fuck is wrong with you, dont recommend that toxic shit