"There's no goal to life."…. Pandemic's Tragic Effects… … Compliance becomes “more and more difficult”. Part 119

This could be a rejection of the religious/spiritual idea that we were built for some purpose or a more personal statement meaning something like "I'm bored with everything" or "I feel listless."

Or it's a way of making "mundane" depression seem profound. Sometimes, a guy who is lonely because he doesn't have a girlfriend or unhappy because he's in a dead-end job will say "Life is pointless."

The truth is he feels bored, alone, and/or scared, but he's expressing himself in operatic terms, maybe because he doesn't want to sound ordinary or he's uncomfortable dealing with his problems head-on. Even the phrasing

"life seems pointless" rather than "my life seems pointless" shifts the problem towards the operatic/romantic and away from the pragmatic.

Life doesn't seem pointless to everyone as they age, as many of the answers here reveal, which is why I've dwelled on possible meanings. You—the asker of this question—haven't explained what you mean, so the best anyone can do is guess about why you feel this way and why the feeling has increased as you've aged.

My guess, because it's what I encounter most often when I talk to people who say "life is pointless," is that you're in the thralls of the final possibility I've mentioned. If you've reached middle-age without finding your way into a solid, happy relationship or a great job, it's easy to feel as if life is pointless.

Whereas a 20-year-old without a girlfriend may be more hopeful, thinking he has many years to find one.

By the age of 27, I had never had a meaningful relationship Then, when I was 30, I got married. Surprise, surprise! My earlier despair was caused by (a) a failure of the imagination, and (b) a desire to not be hurt, again.

Constant, low-level unhappiness seemed preferable to getting my hopes up and having them dashed. So, for that reason, age compelled me towards that "pointless" feeling.

Another way of putting this is I never meet anyone happy in his relationship and job who says, "Life is pointless." I do meet people who say, "I don't know what my problem is. I have a great job and a great marriage, but, still, life seems pointless to me." But when I talk to them, it turns out their "great job" is a well-paying job, not a job that continually excites and challenges them. Or their marriage is stable but boring.

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Thank you …The root of your problems is in your personal life, I urge you to focus on that. Saying "My life is pointless," when the real problem is you're lonely, romanticizes the problem without doing anything to solve it. In fact, it may make the problem worse by causing you to frame yourself as a Profound, Dark Type From a Bergman Film or, by—as with me—deciding loneliness is your "fate."

If your problem is spiritual, it does make sense to say age has an effect. At least it does for some people. It's hard for them to maintain the stance that life has a grand purpose when they see endless suffering, year after year. Or when they've spent years striving for something without achieving it, despite countless prayers and wishes.

If you're religious, you might want to talk to a priest/rabbi/whatever about this.

Most religions have techniques to help people work through these feelings. They work for some people better than others (and, in fact, some people wind up rejecting religion when these techniques fail), but if you are religious or spiritual, it's worth a shot.

What give me that sense?

 Learning more and more mechanistic models for how things work; seeing more and more patterns repeat*; realizing, more and more, that people are often slaves to their instincts rather than their intellects; hearing the same arguments over and over...

Want to add word or two?

For instance—and this is a silly, minor example, but it wearies me nonetheless—I've now lived through three flare-ups of 3D movies.

Each time Hollywood decides to try them out (and it seems to do this every ten years), a bunch of people insist 3D is "the future" and that soon all movies will be made in 3D.

And, like clockwork, each time, once the novelty wears off, the fad dies out, as is happening now. It gets tiring to watch everyone do this dance, which I'm sure I'll see again in another ten years. It's hard to watch it and not feel it's pointless, especially when it's so easy to predict the outcome.)

I want to stress that I just mean "pointless" in the "there's not God with a plan" sense. I don't mean that I feel pointless.

Your comment ….? 

For someone like me (and maybe someone like you), the best way to stave off feelings of pointlessness is to reject the word "pointless." It's pointless to dwell on pointlessness, because the word is too vague to be useful. There are real problems. Specify!

1. Are my "animal" needs being met in ways that truly and deeply satisfying me?

2. Is your life filled with poetry, magic, and a sense of connectedness?

The first question covers things like "Do I have a girlfriend?" The second is about whether or not you have the secular versions of what many people get from religion. Different people infuse their lives with "poetry" in different ways. I get it from Art, being in nature, and from playing.

Playing is really useful, by the way? When was the last time you played, and I don't mean Monopoly or Chess.

I mean played in the mud, talked with a silly voice, made faces in the mirror, etc. When was the last time you played this way with another person. Play is vital, especially when it's social, and it's missing from too many adult lives.