When attempting to answer the question of unhappiness - that is, why is it the case that I am unhappy? - it is rather easy to get lost in a big picture view of things, philosophical ponderings on the nature of the world, that suffering is inherent to life. Which is clearly true. But not useful if one is approaching the matter from an ethical perspective, trying to develop a "plan of action", as it were.

Schopenhauer said the only thing which reconciled him to the Old Testament was the conception of the world as a kind of penal colony for its inhabitants. Indeed, for Schopenhauer it was evident that life was an aberration, a cruel mistake, and that eons of the purest ecstasy could not justify the existence of even one moment of suffering.

There is another school of thought contending that human beings are capable of fashioning their own meaning in the world despite its apparent meaninglessness. But the notion of "meaning" is rather troubling to me. Some actions are pleasurable or satisfying and others are difficult or irritating, or painful. So I suppose the "optimistic nihilist" would say that out of these valences we are to manufacture meaning and, supposedly, if we string enough of these experiences together for a long enough period, we can characterize the entire arc of a life with some overall meaning. But for me this is an error because there is no meaning attached to the feelings whatsoever, they just are what they are and any abstract meaning applied to events does not change them materially at all. Certainly there are interpretations and reinterpretations of facts, but underlying it is some material fact, evidently. The feelings themselves are already interpretations applied instictually to events, since we do not have access to any objective interpretation of reality.

But my more fundamental issue with "optimistic nihilism" is that it simply doesn't work for me, it is seemingly incompatible with my constitution. I do not understand what it means to "create meaning" or what the value would be of interpreting the events of life through some overarching sense of "meaning". The word meaning itself has always seemed to me a misnomer as I have never at any point in life strived for meaning, nor cared for the idea of it even. Of course I have pondered the question "what is the meaning of life?" but I think more than anything I was confused as to what the actual question I wanted to ask was. And the actual question is more along the lines of "What is the justification for existence?" Now I may be subject to the critique that this is merely a rewording of the prior question, but I disagree. The former question asks of existence its underlying secret, it's hidden agenda, i.e. looks at existence and attempts to discern it, whereas the latter looks behind it, as it were, asks why existence exists in the first place.

But more relevant for human purposes is the question of why subjectivity exists, why consciousness, why the capacity for pain (and on the other hand pleasure). It is this final question which really consumes us, eats up the majority of our conscious thought in myriad ways, even though we aren't aware of it. Because if our experience did not consist of these two extremes, then we would have no opinion about what happened in our lives, would not have any reason to do anything.