What has kept you going during a personal crisis?
So, I actually made an account for this.  First off if you&#x27;re having a hard time figuring out why life is worth living reach out.  To friends, family, even to me - but get help from some one, none of us are going through this stuff alone.  Life&#x27;s a bitch.  But...<p>I used to be a pilot.  It was all I wanted to do since I was a kid.  I learned to fly in highschool by working a shitty job and washing planes, and flew for a living for 14 years after graduating.  I went to college while flying full time, got married, started a family, and at about 10 years into the career, I got sick.  It messed up my eye and doctors couldn&#x27;t figure out what happened, but I got a waiver, and went back to flying with one eye for nearly 2 years before getting sick again - this time it took out my other eye, and it was clinically evident what had happened.<p>I had MS.  For nearly a month I couldn&#x27;t read.  I couldn&#x27;t see my kids faces, and every day was this reminder all the time of disability and a broken and vacant future.  I was depressed while undergoing treatment, and lonely because covid about a year into rewriting society and now my immune system was all weird.  I was constantly worried about dying from the medication I was taking - which is still a risk, but not something I can do anything about.  Just in general, I was a damn sight different than a couple years previously.  Then I was a steely-eyed missile man, not afraid of anything, etc. - after I got sick I couldn&#x27;t even drive to the grocery store.<p>Anyway, one of the realizations I had throughout all this was, well, frankly, that life is short, and all the things you enjoy are but fleeting blips, and one day, you&#x27;ll do those things you enjoy for the last time.  So enjoy them now.  That&#x27;s it.  Enjoy what is happening now, because you may not get it for very long - these (right now) are the &quot;good old days.&quot;  So have fun with them.  Enjoy your work, your life, your loved ones, forgive people, and don&#x27;t take anything too seriously - because you know what?  It&#x27;s all going to be gone in a few years.<p>There&#x27;s a great book by a guy named Viktor Frenkl about how he managed to find meaning while living through great suffering and despair in a concentration camp.  If he can find the strength to bear that with dignity, then I can bear this with dignity.  Really, even though the &quot;meaning&quot; I had from my life was &quot;gone&quot; (it wasn&#x27;t really, but it sure felt like it) - I could derive meaning from the act of resistance - from the <i>way</i> that you handle the situation.  Sometimes your only &quot;purpose&quot; in life (if there can be said to be any purpose at all) is to &quot;bear it.&quot;  Ultimately, the last little bit of meaning that I can wring out of this life is that I will fight until the end.<p>The struggle is what&#x27;s important.  Even though it sucks, I want to get better, I want to enjoy myself, and make the world a better place when I&#x27;m done.  Sure it sucks for me, but I&#x27;m going to get better or die trying.  I&#x27;m going to be better than I was before - and although I can&#x27;t do what I used to, I&#x27;m going to do more.  The struggle provides it&#x27;s own meaning.  I won&#x27;t say I&#x27;m not afraid, and it&#x27;s not hard, but I will keep struggling, because the struggle itself provides meaning.  I carry on and keep fighting because it&#x27;s worth doing.<p>I&#x27;m going back to school now, getting a masters in computer vision (ironic I know) because I want to fight.  It&#x27;s hard, and stressful some times - but the hell with it, I&#x27;m going to fight until the bitter end.  Even when everything else feels bleak - the struggle itself can grant some meaning.  Choosing how you handle those problems - even if it kills you - is something that <i>you</i> have agency over.<p>This isn&#x27;t some &quot;toughen up buttercup&quot; BS or whatever - I cry all the time, and I&#x27;m embarrassed of myself when I can&#x27;t do the things I used to.  It&#x27;s not any less challenging, and it&#x27;s none of that stoic shit either - no, cry loudly, complain and whine - there&#x27;s only virtue in stoicism if you think someone else cares.  Instead, I carry on and keep fighting because with my dying breath I want to tell the universe &quot;screw you, I kept fighting.&quot;  That&#x27;s the example I can set for my kids - but it&#x27;s more than that - those are the kind of people I want in this world.  The ones who don&#x27;t give up, so, dammit, I&#x27;m going to be one of them.<p>I believe in you.  It&#x27;ll be alright.  Keep fighting, even when you&#x27;re losing sometimes the fighting can give you meaning and give you a reason to keep on going.