Most of us experience existential angst at some point in life and more often than not a 'paradox' lies at the heart of such experiences.
One paradox I often find myself contemplating is 'significance'. If you asked a hundred people "Is your life significant to you?", most would probably answer in the affirmative. We hold onto the notion that our lives have meaning and purpose. This is obviously not the case for everyone, individuals suffering from depression or contemplating suicide often feel their life is without worth; however, most of us hold life in high esteem and why shouldn't we, life is precious.
Significance is not just about meaning, it can also be experienced on a bodily level and is an innate part of who we are. Research has shown that when people are shown pictures of guns and other dangerous objects compared to pictures of neutral objects, their unconscious physiological responses are significantly different. Individuals who have experienced a dangerous or traumatic situation know well the flight/fight/freeze response the body displays in order to get them to safety. This, and no doubt other examples I have not mentioned, indicate how both consciously and unconsciously we hold a lot of significance to our personal safety and our life.
Now if we flip our thinking and consider the significance of human existence in relation to the vastness of time and space, all of a sudden our lives seem very insignificant in the grand scheme of things. For example, if the earth's history was condensed down to 24hrs, human existence (roughly 200 hundred thousand years) would only make up 1 and a quarter minutes. Roughly 100 billion people have been born and died in human history. Earth is thought to be one of 10 billion other habitable planets in our galaxy the Milky Way and our galaxy is one of 100s of billions in the known universe. The sheer scale of time and space is enough to boggle the mind and could cause someone to question their own significance.
When you consider the paradox between these two 'realities' you can begin to experience the tension and existential angst contained within. This is not to assume that people who suffer from increased feelings of insignificance and lack of meaning or purpose sit at home gloomily contemplating the size of the universe and how short their life span is. They do so because of a multitude of different reasons. But if for a moment we stop and consider the significance paradox we get a glimpse of what it means to sit with this contradiction.
I feel a great sense of empathy for people who are burdened with feelings of insignificance. It must be extremely hard to live in a world with reduced meaning and purpose. The good news is there is help that can help you along this path onto a better place. Psychotherapy is one of the few places which allows the depth of reflection often needed to work through such complex feelings.
If I ever start to experience my own feelings of insignificance I always try to remember a Joseph Campbell quote:
"Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning."