If you’re given a choice to live or to never have existed, which would you pick?

[Darkover]

I think about this quite often actually. If I had a choice, I would have chosen not to exist. Not everyone gets to live a happy life filled with meaning and purpose, but spend their entire lives searching for something that they never find. Years and years of unhappiness and loneliness cannot be wiped away with the few good moments that they get to experience once in a while; overall the pain outweighs the joy, and nothing can make up for that. For this reason also I will never have kids, I simply do not wish this kind of life on anyone.

 

[sserafim]

I would choose to never have existed at all. Life is something that I would be okay with not experiencing. There's a saying by David Benatar called "better never to have been", where it's better to never have come into existence because existence will inevitably harm an individual. David Benatar believes that the absence of pain is more important than the presence of pleasure. Pleasure is non-essential, but pain actively causes harm and distress.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

I wish I never existed. I hate existing.

 

[SilentSadness]

Of course I would choose to never have existed, this isn't even a question for me.

 

[SillyGirl>_<]

I'd love to try a life where I'm actually content with living and myself. But if I had to chose to exist or to not exist with my current life I'd chose to not exist in a heartbeat.

 

[sserafim]

Antinatalism - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

David Benatar - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Benatar's asymmetry argument - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

"David Benatar argues that there is a crucial asymmetry between the good and the bad things, such as pleasure and pain:

1. the presence of pain is bad;
2. the presence of pleasure is good;
3. the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone;
4. the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation"

 

[R_N]

I don't even know if it's possible to not exist anymore. That sounds weird and irrational to say but it is how I feel rn.

I went from "I didn't exist before parents made me" and "When my body shuts down I won't exist" to "I dunno wtf is going on nor will I ever know".

I am just a leaf in some stream being at mercy of it's current. I don't think we know much and I don't think it matters if we do.

 

[Hunter2005]

I wish I have never existed because my life is just full of darkness.

 

[Forever Sleep]

It's not that it was all bad but, I'd prefer not to have existed. Partly because a fair bit of life hasn't been good but also because it's not going to be easy to get rid of this life. Not just for me, it will likely hurt other people to an extent too. I don't want them to go through that. It isn't my wish to put them through that.

To be honest, I feel quite resentful that I've been given this problem to deal with. Life just feels like a never ending sequence of problems that you have very few options but to try and solve. And, death is made that way too because, everyone insists on keeping you held hostage here until you're falling to bits and can't afford to put yourself back together again.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

If I wasn't such a big failure I'd choose to live. But bc of that big failure I wish I'd never existed at all.

 

[Return2themoonlight]

Although life has its benefits, this world and society itself is not. So I would opt to never exist at all.

 

[FuneralCry]

I personally wish I never existed more than anything, I only see eternal nothingness as ideal as it's the permanent absence of all suffering and harm, to procreate into this hellish reality even know there is literally no limit as to how much one can suffer truly is unacceptable to me. Existence itself is the true problem and to have the ability to exist is undesirable in every way possible, the only perfection lies in never existing.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

Never have existed

 

[ManByTheRiver]

Even if life is absolutely shitty most of the time, I still find an odd beauty in it, I would choose to live through with suffering every time, until I've had my fill.

 

[BlazingBob]

That's an easy one

 

[FitsTime]

I'm like this only because things went a certain way, otherwise i could be happy.
For this i caused a lot of emotional pain to me and to others, even if it was not my fault at all; unfortunately there was so much ignorance in my hometown at that time and i could not fix a small issue in time.
This rational thinking, that things could have been different, makes me forgive my self and my hometown and makes me wanna live, but once i step into reality and i remember all the pain, i cannot fix things and i wish i never have existed. I think that giving pain to people is one of the biggest things that i hated of this whole life.
In other circumstances life can be beautiful: you can discover a lot of things, smile with people when enjoying accomplishments and a lot more.
It was just not the case and i'm not stepping back.

 

[Unattainable666]

This is an easy one. Never to have existed. Would have saved me lots of pain and tears.

 

[sanction]

extremely easy answer.................................. (never existed)

Things were completely 10000000% fine before we were born, for all those hundreds of millions of years

Then surprisingly, every night when we're deep asleep, it is also pretty much 1000000% fine

So the conclusion is non-existence is the best and safest feeling ever

 

[DoomedDarkCircles]

If I could go back to fix my stupid actions of the past, I'd choose living. But the way things are now, I'd rather not to exist at all