I can relate to what drfuzzy has said.
One particularly bad winter when I was literally obsessed with suicide I had to ask myself this very question. It came down to not wanting to hurt my parents and wanting to achieve something with my research to have made it all worthwhile. In the end I decided that not wanting to hurt my parents wasn't actually helping me because it was just another burden to feel bad about. So the only thing left was my research.
From there I promised myself another year to live before I would decide again and from that I made a slow recovery over several years. But I am still driven to make some kind of discovery or some contribution to the human race. My baseline contentedness is determined by whether I feel like I am making progress or not.
One particularly bad winter when I was literally obsessed with suicide I had to ask myself this very question. It came down to not wanting to hurt my parents and wanting to achieve something with my research to have made it all worthwhile. In the end I decided that not wanting to hurt my parents wasn't actually helping me because it was just another burden to feel bad about. So the only thing left was my research.
From there I promised myself another year to live before I would decide again and from that I made a slow recovery over several years. But I am still driven to make some kind of discovery or some contribution to the human race. My baseline contentedness is determined by whether I feel like I am making progress or not.
