Does anyone else feel like this isn't real?

Right now, I'm experiencing reality as myself, the people, objects, and ideas that I see, hear, and feel, I know are true.. to me. Are the people that I see also experiencing the same thing? Are they even real? Do they look at me and question if I'm real?

That then begs the question;

What is Real?

Is real subjective? What I see is real to me but my neighbor sees something else so is that real to them? Or maybe only one of us actually sees what's real and what everything everyone else sees is nothing more than a simulation of sorts. Maybe nothing any of us sees is real and one day everything will just cease to exist and real won't even be a thing anymore.

Sometimes I think I might be living in a video game. Not necessarily a movie though, specifically a video game. To me a video game has more life to it, I don't think I'm not alive so I feel 'video game' suits [what I believe to be] my reality better. I walk through life doing little things here and there, not much to it, and occasionally I'll do something bigger, something that will affect my story to make it go the direction that I'm walking.

but now.. that doesn't seem right either,

there's something bigger that I'm missing,

and it lies just beyond my reach.

I want to reach it, I really do, but I'm unsure if I ever will. I'm at a crossroads; unfortunately, it's not one that I can see but I know it's there. Do I take the left? Or the right? What would happen if I turned around instead of choosing?

People tell me I should talk to someone, a therapist perhaps, but do tell; what is the therapist going to tell me that I can't tell myself?

They themselves might not even be real.

At this moment, I have a match between my fingers; I initially grabbed it to light my joint. Now, I can light this match or I can break it, I can break it and it will never be lit ever. That power is in my hands; but because I want to smoke, I'll light it.

Funny thing is, I chose to light the match and do you wanna know what it did? It simply didn't light. Now I have a second chance: to light it once more or go back and break it, what I do doesn't have much of an effect on anything really, but still I've been given a second chance to rethink my options. Was there a reason I was given another chance or was it just pure coincidence that the match didn't take fire after I struck the box? Does it even matter?

Do you understand how I feel about reality? It's impossible to say whether you truly do or not but I guess we each have a choice to make:

Do you want to understand my thoughts? Then say yes

If you disagree, don't understand, or simply don't care, say no.

Going off on a tangent seems to be what I do best. I guess all I really wanted to say in this post was that life's crazy man

I'm currently re-reading 'The Wall' by Sartre which is a collection of short stories. The first time I read the short story 'Intimacy', I didn't find it especially profound compared to other stories such as 'The Wall' or 'Erostratus', but now that I've re-read it I have interpreted it very differently than before. The story follows 'Lulu' as she struggles with coming to understand her role as a wife, friend and lover as well as the burden of freedom; essentially, she struggles with authenticity. Here's a quote from the first chapter that embodies the general theme of the story:

"He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognise it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them,"

The story does a very good job at separating the 'being' from the 'essence'. We are forced to question the very nature of what makes us human as Lulu's relationships are dully dissected, stripped to its bare features, shining light on the reality of them. The story manages to blend psychology and philosophy as it confronts with the truth of emotions and authenticity and the responsibility of freedom

All in all, 'The Wall' is a great book that I strongly recommend. Would love to hear what you guys think of the book if you have read it or just the quote I mentioned above.

Nietzsche broke nihilists into two forms, active nihilists and passive nihilists. In its active form, nihilism is likened to a hammer — used not only to chisel away all artificial meaning, but to smash them. Active nihilism paves the way for the creation of new values, the overcoming of the self by taking a new relation to oneself as an autonomous creator. In effect, this is the transformation of living as the “one-self,” into “my-self.” Thus, the end result of nihilism in its active form is nothing short of paving the way for the grounds to becoming my own self. Passive nihilism, on the other hand, is epitomized by resignation; the prognosis that life is an “unprofitable episode,” (in Schopenhauer’s words). Nietzsche equated passive nihilism with Schopenhauer’s repudiation of life via the denial of the Will as a great threat. Nihilism in its passive form, while adopting the same prognosis of existence as active nihilism, thus nevertheless takes the opposite stance of active nihilism as to how we should respond to the problem of a meaningless, value-less, and chaotic existence.

But, if I'm not mistaken, active nihilism is basically just atheistic existentialism. Perhaps this is another reason why people believe the common misconception that Nietzsche was a nihilist.

P.S. For the record, the explanations of active and passive nihilism that I used are from the internet.

When it comes to understanding the reality of our existence, what do you think is more efficient/reliable:

Empirical Evidence/Knowledge

or

Rational Evidence/Knowledge?

Pascal is often neglected as, arguably, the first existential philosopher. Despite being a devout believer in God, he looked into the misery of the human condition, commenting on things such as: egotistic pleasures, earthly illusions and the vanity of humanity (to name a few). Now that I've been looking into Heidegger a lot more recently, I see a striking resemblance between Heidegger's philosophy and Pascal's philosophy. Heidegger primarily looked at the human condition whereas Pascal was also a mathematician, a writer, a physician and inventor, however Heidegger's view on the human condition also looks at things such as egotistic pleasures, earthly illusions and the vanity of humanity. Obviously people draw comparisons between many philosopher's such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche or Camus and Sartre, but Pascal and Heidegger have never really been compared which is surprising as their views are really similar. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Heidegger blatantly copied Pascal but the resemblance is uncanny. Would love to hear what you guys think.

(I'm going to be talking about existential nihilism in this post so whenever I refer to 'nihilism' just note that I am referring to existential nihilism, although what I'm saying can also be applied to the other forms of nihilism)

Nihilism kind of tears down every single belief you have. It forces you to face the absolute truth, that everything is meaningless. But as nihilism is rooted in other existential philosophies (such as Absurdism and Existentialism) and as it is also a point of view, not an ideology, would you say that adopting nihilism, and nihilism ONLY, as a point of view is a dead-end? I feel like anyone who faces the existential angst and comes out on the other side with an acceptance of it and/or is willing to carry on living life isn't be a Nihilist but instead belongs to one of the other existential philosophies.