Sorry to not have anything better to contribute, but as a 40 years old having also an existential crisis… when I was 24, it was probably one of the worst periods of my life. You think you are a grown up, so you take life seriously, but you have zero experience and abilities, and to over come this gap everyday in life is exhausting and frustrating.

Good luck.

All the amazingly fun things in your life have already happened., and admit it: it hasn’t been that great. When you were younger, life seemed to offer so many possibilities, but now your options are rapidly narrowing. At some point, you will completely give your heart to someone and they will break it. As you age each year, your ability to bounce back from life’s challenges will constantly diminish. Life is often randomly cruel; what is the point?

You are almost a quarter through your life if you even get to 100 years old, which you probably won’t, in fact you could really die at any moment and what would you have accomplished. Good luck making something out of your life.

Biggie was shot at age 24, and Tupac at age 25. Their entire careers took place before the age you're just about to reach. Even if you're not into rap, just think about all they did, and then all you have done, and compare them.

You've only got like 10 years before you're in your mid 30s, then your health and well being is only going downhill from there... and that's IF you're healthy now...

Oh also something interesting I was thinking about..

With the exponential growth of tech & AI over time, we're probably going to be able to make virtual worlds like in SAO eventually.

If we can go deeper in reality, can't we also go up?

We don't know whether we're at the top/original reality or there are higher realities that exist, i.e this could be a simulation as well or there are divine levels of existence.

When you zoom out and realize you can probably go both ways, you think, what does it all mean?
wtf is real and isn't?

I remember when I was 24. And no, it doesn't get any better. It will always get worse from now on. Your friends are shallow and don't care about you. You're about to see your parents get old and eventually die (if lucky) or lose their minds first (if not). Cheers!

Thinking about the fact that you're asking this is enough to cause an existential crisis on it's own.
How's that for some awareness aikido

depending on your p(doom)/techno optimism/etc you are either:
alive at a time where you can get excited about all of the possibilities of new technologies, but no matter what we accomplish (barring significant longevity shifts in a short amount of time, I guess?), you'll die knowing there are still many interesting things on the horizon that you'll never get to see
or
alive at a time where you can feel nervous about the possibilities of new technologies, live an anxious life as you're mostly powerless to stop it, and potentially witness in real time as we cede the earth to the robots and they take over

One nice part of it is that with how fast life is evolving, you will probably make it to 100, meaning you are only 1/4 of the way in your life and have a lot of time to do whatever you want later.

It is statistically likely that you have already spent the vast majority of time with your parents that you ever will, due to constant contact during childhood, work/chores consuming most of your waking time in adulthood, and their eventual deaths.

You are ~30% of the way to your life expectancy (assuming you live in a wealthy country), and the most likely outcome is that, after that, your mind and memories will completely cease to exist when your brain dies. Meanwhile, your body is first eaten by the bacteria comprising ~50% of your mass, like a nation collapsing into civil war after the monarch dies, and then probably either by maggots and worms if you're buried, or gruesomely melted and charred into ash if you're cremated.

This is the best-case plausible scenario. Other possibilities include:

1. A religion with an afterlife based on harsh divine judgement is real, meaning there is a high likelihood of being horrifically tortured for eternity in hell due to not picking the right religion

2. Presentism is real, meaning your consciousness only exists in this present moment, having just been created an instant ago and ceasing to exist and instant from now, incorrectly thinking time flows continuously because it's presently aware of past memories and future intentions

3. Quantum immortality is real, meaning you will find yourself literally living forever by increasingly bizarre luck due to quantum multiverses, and you will likely find yourself being kept prisoner and experimented upon by increasingly technologically advanced governments trying to use you to develop immortality serum, until heat death of the universe

4. Reincarnation is real

   1. If only to humans in the present, there is moderate likelihood you will find yourself born into extreme poverty in an authoritarian, ultraconservative nation.

   2. If including past humans, it's almost guaranteed you'll repeatedly be a peasant in extreme poverty, suffering frequent danger from violence, disease, hunger, and (if a woman) childbirth.

   3. If including the future, it will probably be extremely alien and confusing, with a significant likelihood of being stuck in a stable permanent dystopia.

   4. If including present vertebrate animals, it's almost guaranteed you'll repeatedly be a factory farmed chicken tortured by abuse, confinement, and overcrowding, or a small fish living and dying in agony from predation, disease, and hunger, your mind primarily controlled by instinct rather than thought.

   5. If including present invertebrate animals, it's almost guaranteed you'll repeatedly be a tiny larva killed by the thousands or millions any time an r-selected species reproduces, frequently getting paralysed and devoured alive by ichneumonid parasitoid wasps.

5. Patternism (possibly incorrect name) is real, meaning your mind is defined by its pattern rather than matter, so if any perfect simulation of your mental state pattern is ever made, even if long after your death, on the other side of the universe, you will find your consciousness suddenly living this simulation, likely being used in a digital dystopia of forced labour, experimentation, entertainment, or acausal blackmail, at the mercy of whichever entity simulated you.

Here's a picture of a cosmic Quokka to take your mind off all this grim stuff:

I'm only 4 years younger than you and I don't feel like an adult

ur almost halfway to fifty!!

2023 was the hottest year on record. 2023 will likely be colder than every other year for the rest of your life.

2024 will likely be hotter than 2023. 2024 will likely be colder than every other year for the rest of your life.

With respect to catastrophic extreme weather events and barring typical annual climatic variations (e.g. ENSO), every year of your life going forward will likely be the coldest, most stable, and overall "best" year of the rest of your life.

If you are lucky you will live long enough to see global anthropogenic emissions gradually slow, shrink, and eventually reverse -- but even if this happens it's unlikely you will live to see the planetary ecosystem recover to a pre-millennium equilibrium.

Treasure the present -- a world where it still snows in NYC in December, where coral atoll island nations still jut above sea level, where California's wildfire season is indeed a season and not an ongoing event. It will not last forever.

Time to start saving your sperm/eggs as well. It will only go down from here if you want kids (if you can afford them/if you can buy a house/if you can find a stable partner)

Your brain hasn't even reached full maturity yet. You're basically a baby and that is dreadful.