![\"\"](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/04\/existential2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Many people have, throughout their lives, experienced varying degrees of existential angst: the feeling of being some combination of unmoored, bored, anxious, restless, depressed, lost, isolated, and\/or alienated, and simply wondering what it\u2019s all about.<\/span><\/p>\n For many too, these feelings of existential angst have been exacerbated over the past pandemic-burdened year. Yet, heightened though these feelings may have been, they may have also, in a strange way, been easier to deal with during this period than they were prior to its start \u2014 and still easier than they\u2019ll be after it\u2019s through.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the most difficult things about existential angst, is that it can be isolatingly individual, of indeterminate length, with a cause, and solution, that is vexingly difficult to pin down. During the pandemic, however, the cause of one\u2019s angst became external, clear, tangible, and universal, with an end date that was at least (semi) defined. People could point to the pandemic and say, \u201c<\/span>That\u2019s <\/span><\/i>why I\u2019m feeling off,\u201d and reason to themselves: \u201cOnce x, y, and z return to normal, then I\u2019ll feel fine.\u201d This buttressing, in the form of having a definable explanation for one\u2019s malaise, thus allowed for that malaise to be both more acute and easier to bear.<\/span><\/p>\n In the post-COVID landscape, feelings of existential angst may return to their pre-pandemic levels, and yet are likely to stand out in starker, more disorienting relief than ever. When a weight once wholly carried, is for a time buttressed by supports, but then loses those supports, the original weight feels heavier than before.<\/span><\/p>\n This hypothesis may seem off the mark at the moment. Hope and optimism are in the air; a light at the end of the tunnel is warming the blood. We feel certain that a resumption in indoor dining, and parties, and travel<\/span> will <\/span><\/i>entirely eliminate our feelings of existential angst. And indeed they will, for a time. When the dopamine that accompanies novelty (or the re-novelization of old habits) surges, we\u2019ll be all aglow with anticipation and excitement and momentum. But when that parabolic arc of dopamine hits its peak and begins its descent \u2014 <\/span>which it always, always does<\/span><\/a> \u2014 we\u2019ll recognize the old feelings of angst again, once more shorn of any ready-made concrete cause. And the re-realization that visits to the local ramen bar and trips to Hawaii don\u2019t resolve the desire for greater meaning, the resettling of the full weight of yearning on the soul, may usher in a widespread existential crisis. <\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to \u201cemergency prep,\u201d we prepare for natural disasters by <\/span>building bug out bags<\/span><\/a>, prepare for a breakdown of the utility grid by <\/span>storing up a long-term water supply<\/span><\/a>, and will one day ready ourselves for the possibility of a future pandemic by . . . buying toilet paper? But are we preparing for a potential existential emergency?<\/span> Is<\/span><\/i> there any way to prepare for such a crisis?<\/span><\/p>\n