I'll toss out another way to look at nihilism and avoiding it, or living with it. All of the absurdity that life presents you? Teach yourself to laugh at it, and to enjoy it and make others laugh with you. I've done it by studying philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Here in current year, the most ridiculous stuff I run into is frequently based on the reification of some form of theory from the past that has been poorly understood but internalized by those causing me to chuckle.

I assumed I was okay, and then assumed all of you who make life absurd must have something the hell wrong with you. Then I went out trying to figure out what it was. Much of it seems to stem from so many of us having a too superficial exposure to a few thousand years of thinking by dozens and dozens of people who were brighter than most of us, and then taking snippets of multitudes of extraordinarily complex analyses, reducing them to too simple maps of reality, mapping them onto the most complex social and technological environments any human has ever existed in, and trying to operate as though the world it predicts is materially "True."

In an environment so poorly understood as ours, finding meaning enough to avoid nihilism is as simple as taking a moment to make some meaning rather than dwelling on discovering it. Cleaning your room is one way. Firing up the weedeater is another. Volunteering to sit with AND TALK WITH the elders is useful.

Forcing yourself to learn that many of the answers you seek were intentionally hidden from you by your "teachers" is also effective. How to have a good life was answered thousands of years ago: practice aiming for good, and practice figuring out what good, is. Practice actually becoming good at aiming toward something that IS actually good. And practice laughing at absurdity.