This post is somewhat of spill of my inner thoughts that fill me with paradoxes and self-fulfilling prophecies that fill my day as I do the ever so popular activity of working from home.
I sit at home all day and do work on my company supplied computer that seemingly has no substance. This allows me to run through theories in my head all day and does not allow me to escape them. The largest one that crosses my mind on a daily basis is the impermanence and pointlessness of life.
A strong disclaimer that I will make before continuing with this post it is not intended to suggest taking ones own life.
I read a book recently called "Dopamine Nation" and one point in particular stood out to me which was the discussion around our culture's obsession with sex and the author's opinion for it's reasoning was that it is one of the only naturally human activities that we still take part in. Another item I would add to the list of things we still take part in is death.
It is an intriguing topic to me as there does not seem to be much "point" to anything we do as humans. If you quit your job and take on a massive amount of debt - it does not matter. If you receive a promotion for working hard at your job - it does not matter. If you die tomorrow - it does not matter. There is nothing that really matters in this world as I hope many others alongside myself have recognized, life is not real and has absolutely no meaning.
The only meaning which would be (and I simply cannot think of a another word that conveys a positive connotation without adding any seriousness) cool if anyone who reads this post could take away from it, the only rational and meaningful thing to do in life is love. To make choices with love in mind in order to create a domino effect of love is just about the only cool thing to do with our lives.
Yeah, the fundamental equations governing the evolution of the universe make no reference to humans, but that was a silly place to search for meaning to begin with. I would also ask for a more precise definition of what you mean by "matters". If you quit your job, you will certainly cause various other things to happen in the world, if you have children their standard of life will drop, if you die people will miss you and grieve you. Your life is causally connected to the rest of the universe.
If what you want is some form of "existential satisfaction", like wanting the answer to a question that you don't know how to phrase, or you feel like there has to be more to life than the mundane day-to-day stuff, then the answer is meditation, lots and lots of meditation (most effectively of the buddhist variety). In my opinion meditative awakening is pretty much the only thing that actually answers the fundamental question of meaning. If you're somewhat unpatient and non-risk-averse then 5-meo-dmt does a good job of temporarily catapulting you to the end of the path, but be careful and do lots of research before trying.
Are you referring to Dark Night stuff in the Daniel Ingram sense or something else? I'd agree temporary emotional turmoil is likely past a cerain point, and might be extreme in certain cases, but I haven't heard of decreases in cognitive capabilities (it certainly didn't do that for me). We'll just have to disagree about whether the meaning brought by high-level meditation is real or not, since I'm not sure how to respond to that except to quote personnal experience and the reports of other people who have done lots of meditation.