Shadowing Practice: The Desire to Not Exist - Learn English Speaking with Video
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It's likely that millions, perhaps even billions of people, have at one point or another felt the desire to not exist.
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Now when I say not exist, I'm not talking about the way some people wish they had never been born or even somebody's self-destructive fantasies.
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No, the desire to not exist is the yearning to magically disappear, preferably in a way that doesn't require any sadness, violence or death.
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You may know it as the wish to fall asleep and never wake up again.
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As often as this desire is felt, it's mysteriously rarely discussed.
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What I found surrounding why we sometimes feel this way says a lot about the nature of our existence, desires, and how we interpret the existence of others.
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In one of the most memorable scenes from Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov, a monk and an atheist walk into a bar.
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They're brothers, Karamazov to be exact.
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What ensues is a debate about the existence of God, albeit an unconventional one.
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In our world, nobody escapes the torture of daily pains and disappointment.
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Even children suffer in horrific extremes.
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Thus, God, the elder of the two brothers maintains, must be evil to have introduced us to such a world.
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Any promises of paradise after this life are just taunts.
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Life is but a cruel angel's thesis.
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It's not that I don't accept God, I just most respectfully return him the ticket," he says.
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Ivan Karamazov rejects all notions of God's goodness, but even further than that, we can interpret that for Ivan it is not so important to contemplate whether or not God exists.
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The question that must be asked is whether or not we want to exist in a world like this one.
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This idea would be repeated by Albert Camus, who famously made the remark that in deciding Whether or not one should kill oneself, one answers the fundamental question of philosophy.
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When we think of the desire to not exist, we usually imagine something akin to this kind of thinking.
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The idea that life is meaningless and insufferable is a popular one.
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However, when compared to these outlooks, the desire to not exist is unique.
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What these individuals desire is not death, but to experience non-experience.
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The desire is not a logical set of beliefs about the characteristics of life, but a complex psychological wish.
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Furthermore, not everyone who longs for nothingness thinks existence is entirely unbearable.
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To not want to die, but also wanting to simply not exist, implies a contradictory hope that one might continue to go on living.
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I think the most tempting way to explain this is to bring up what is called cognitive dissonance.
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When a person has two contradictory beliefs, but can only embody one of them, they will pick the one that is easier to exhibit.
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In this case, it's easy to suggest
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that the people who would like to not exist continue to live their lives because death is much too messy and final.
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It takes a certain dedication to accept death.
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Of course, there is something to be said for this idea.
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After all, most people would hesitate to see death as a solution to their problems, but this outlook of cognitive dissonance ignores the intense feeling these individuals still experience.
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Not to mention the ways they'll still attempt to replicate nothingness in their own lives.
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One way of reading this contradiction is that it is prohibition that leads to fantasy.
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We desire that which we cannot have.
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Not only is nothingness impossible, we're told that we must not achieve it.
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We might therefore desire nothingness simply as a way to exert our freedom.
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The impossible is desired all the more for its impossibility.
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One of the best references to the desire to not exist can be found in the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's book, The Sickness Unto Death.
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Kierkegaard's argument is that the torment of the desire to not exist is the hopelessness of not even being able to die.
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Death means an end to life, a perceived nothingness.
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Though not a sickness that will literally end in death.
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Once a more horrifying reality than death is encountered, one will wish they could die.
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When even this last respite is taken from them, the desire to disappear will consume them in an act that Kierkegaard calls despair.
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But as we've already discussed, those that suffer from the desire to not exist don't exactly want to die.
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Kierkegaard, a deeply religious thinker, thought of despair as a response to the eternity that lies after death.
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By replacing his mentions of death with the idea of nothingness, we lose something from his writings, but even if we disassemble this part of his argument, the most fascinating portion still remains.
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There exist, even in life, simulated perceptions of eternity.
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When time is slowed to a crawl and every monotonous day bleeds out in unity, we are held a hostage of eternity.
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Boredom, depression, and nostalgia all linger here, but some of the less familiar residents of non-time also deserve a mention.
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The delirious ache of desire is felt here, and it is also in the silence of eternity that we catch our glimpse of nothingness.
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Eternity is important to Kierkegaard's argument because it preserves everything he says a despairing person wishes they could be freed from.
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It's in eternity that the self remains immutable, and that's exactly what can be so dreadful about it.
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A self is a heavy burden.
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During the total ceasefire of time, the inability to escape from ourselves grows ever more prominent.
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Under the right conditions, that can be its own form of suffering. At a first glance,
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the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion appears to be about angsty teens
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piloting giant robots as they fight otherworldly entities referred to as angels.
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But in reality, the show is about one 14 year old boy's fight with his desire to not exist.
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Of course, spoilers ahead.
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Each of the main characters suffers from an intense existential loneliness.
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However, it's in Shinji, a character modeled after the anime's creator, that we find the show's depiction of this desire.
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Episode 16 is even titled The Sickness Unto Death, in reference to Kierkegaard.
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Eva isn't shy about naming its philosophical influences.
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By explicitly using philosophy, Neon Genesis Evangelion presents us with an interesting existential argument.
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In order to understand that argument, we need to take a look at the ideas of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, another one of the anime's major influences.
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In his book The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer describes the way individuality can cause suffering.
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He argues that the world is made up of will and representation, while the total universe is in fact one thing, operating in unity, human beings each have their own will,
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distinct from that of the universe and each other.
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Furthermore, each person only experiences a limited sample of the total universe, causing them to have their own unique perspectives, longings, and pains.
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To Schopenhauer, as long as human beings exist separately from one another, there will be suffering.
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This dilemma is portrayed countless times in Evangelion, as the main cast of characters repeatedly struggle to deal with
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the pain inherent to the process of becoming close to another person.
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Ava doesn't just stop here, though.
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The shadowy organization ZILA seeks the literal unification of all human life through what is called the Human Instrumentality Project.
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The project is intended to destroy the boundaries of our egos
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and allow for total harmony as each person's consciousness is merged into one total unit.
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This apocalyptic event will unite all minds, hearts, and bodies as one.
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In the movie End of Evangelion, after the human instrumentality project is unwittingly put into motion by Shinji,
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we're presented with a surreal commentary on the psychology of those who desire nothingness.
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The psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan suggested that our desires form in response to our separation from one another.
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Lacan often discussed the existence of something called the Other.
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We can understand his mentions of the Other in two ways.
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First as someone who is not you.
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Second as the Big Other, a more enigmatic character.
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The Big Other's essential feature is that we struggle to know what it desires despite our persistent efforts to find out.
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The Big Other is not a person, par se.
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It is a symbol, a category.
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All desire forms in response to some lack in our lives.
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All desire fundamentally presupposes other desires.
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And all desire craves recognition.
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Lacan's argument is that your desire comes from your best guess as to what the big other lacks or desires.
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The big other is always present in the mind.
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Its imagined presence leading you to wonder if your desire is acceptable, and more importantly, you, as you define yourself, are a desirable person.
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Schopenhauer saw the individual will of the self as a pointless striving with no end.
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To him, only suffering arises from our wants, because our wants can only stem from an initial dissatisfaction.
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This also applies to what Lacan is saying here about desire.
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There are many ways one's desire might repel others, and it is always a fact that we never truly comprehend what the other desires from us.
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The burden of desire easily finds itself implicated alongside pain.
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Evangelion makes the very important point that obsessing over the desire of the other can introduce feelings of shame, ending in the desire to not exist.
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Shame is a deep disappointment with oneself for not being desired, a feeling that the whole self is invalid.
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Yet it can only be felt before something of an audience, even if it's an imagined one.
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In Shame, we view ourselves from an exterior perspective, that of the Big Other.
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The desire of the Big Other isn't as simple a matter as merely doing what other people want from us, it's about wanting the thing other people want.
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Shinji is afraid that he has no desirable qualities other than being the pilot of his Eva, and to be fair, he's not so far off.
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He's let demands of other people dominate him, demands that stem from their own unresolved issues.
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Risato wants Shinji to be what she could never be, Asuka wants him to be less apologetic in pursuing her, and by the end of it all,
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it's still not really clear what his father desires of him.
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Notorious is a dynamic that plays out as a result.
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Shinji thrashes about in indecision, hesitant to pilot his Eva knowing the pain it will cause him, but nonetheless wanting to please others.
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He's told to only do it if he wants to, which is really just a more severe way of being told to do it and enjoy it.
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presentation of a choice here is really an illusion.
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All of this culminates into the conflict of Shinji's own desires as they bite
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and cower at the desire of the Big Other.
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In certain scenes and through certain responses, we see that Shinji is ashamed that his desires are not those of the others.
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One can think life is full of good and still not want to fully take part in it.
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Rebelling against all existence, he thinks he has acquired evidence against existence, against its goodness.
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The despairer thinks that he himself is this evidence.
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Acting against what we desire or feeling disgust at what we desire both lead to shame.
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Both involve a sensitivity to the big other.
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Desire always plays some sort of a role in shame
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because the true nature of our wants constitutes a fundamental part of the self.
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Despair over something, such as rejection, really is despair over having a self, writes Kierkegaard.
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I believe the desire to not exist can be understood as an expression of frustration at one's individual existence.
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Despair rages in each of us as we acknowledge the truth that we are not one, but rejection especially bruises those who desperately want to be desired.
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These persons who suffer from the desire to not exist really want to have no desires,
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to experience the freedom and peace of a complete dissolution of the self as it is known.
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We will never be one, but after I cease all striving forward, perhaps I can numb the pain inflicted on me by my neglected desires.
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Everything that matters to me matters in this world.
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And that's the precise reason I find it all so tiring.
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The cold anesthesia of nothingness is the nuclear option for desire.
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This attitude of distance is fully displayed in the behaviors tied to the desire to not exist.
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There's just one more thing I wanted to understand.
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What's the solution?
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In order to figure that out, I first thought it necessary to get as close as possible to actually experiencing nothingness myself.
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Deprivation tanks are pods of salt water that work to eliminate each of the five senses.
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In them, there's no light, sound, or gravity.
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In order to experience what nothing this is like, I decided to jump into one of these things.
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After setting up an appointment at a place that offered these, I step in and begin to float.
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The lights turn off, and slowly my world is ending.
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Finally, only I remain.
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There is nothing, only warm primordial blackness.
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My body is sleek from the salt.
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The water feels as if it expands out infinitely.
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My limbs grow heavy.
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In the darkness, my eyes project forth the afterimages of meaningless shapes
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and colors that I spend some time assembling into coherent objects.
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My time in that pod felt both instantaneous and infinite, almost like a dream.
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When it did end, stepping out of the darkness, I felt as if I was emerging from an imaginary space deep within myself.
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And yet, I found that the peace I experienced there did not make me hate existence.
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I rather felt content with it.
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In episode 20 of Evangelion, Shinji is dissolved into a primordial soup inside of his mecha with only his consciousness remaining.
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Kind of like me here.
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Kind of.
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Given the choice to remain in this state of nothingness, or to return to the physical world, he contemplates his self-worth.
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We're again introduced here to the fact that Shinji determines the value of his existence through how desirable he is to others.
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We are to understand however the solution that is proposed here, as it is this that ultimately influences Shinji's desire to return to the real world.
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Thought philosophy is in some way an interpretation of the philosopher's own experiences.
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Sensory deprivation, although not as surreal an experience as to what Shinji goes through here, helped me to understand that there is yet another way to imagine ourselves returning life the ticket.
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We do not need to allow the immediacy of our existence to define us.
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We can learn to create out of the void that we yearn to return to.
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We all have the ability to go from feeling a mixture of pleasure
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and guilt in our desire to feeling secure in the thing that propels our desire.
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I believe that part of this process is learning to decide for ourselves how we feel about our desires
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and what causes them, instead of presenting ourselves to be judged by a jury of our own conjuring.
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We must understand that everything in this life is in a constant state of becoming.
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All people will continue to grow closer and farther from each other in an endless variety of ways.
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In our simulated eternities, we fear that we will always be prone to repeat the same mistakes,
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desire the same things, and to always be the disgusting person we are now.
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If we trust in the idea that even the absurd is possible, we can instead push forward to carve out opportunities for our acceptance.
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Shame arises when we trust in the big other to decide what is acceptable for us.
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But the actual people in our lives, while they might not always agree with what we desire, still have the chance to accept us if we trust them.
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will always exist between what they want and what we want.
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Accept that, and you can take the risk to be accepted yourself.
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In taking that risk, in accepting the potential pains of desire, you'll already have made steps towards accepting yourself,
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and moved beyond the desire to not exist.
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If you enjoyed this video, you'll absolutely love my video on the game with a perfect portrayal of trauma.
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Who Would Benefit from This Video?
This video is perfect for intermediate to advanced English learners aiming to boost their IELTS speaking practice or refine their ability to discuss complex ideas. If you want to move beyond basic conversation and explore nuanced topics like philosophy and psychology, this content will stretch your vocabulary and critical thinking. It’s also ideal for those practicing shadow speak—mimicking native speech patterns—since the speaker uses a deliberate, expressive tone that’s easy to follow and replicate.
Words & Idioms Worth Stealing
- Yearning: A strong, deep desire. Example: "She felt a yearning to travel the world."
- Cognitive dissonance: The mental stress of holding two conflicting beliefs. Example: "His love for junk food and desire to be healthy created cognitive dissonance."
- Taunts: Mocking remarks intended to hurt or provoke. Example: "The bully’s taunts didn’t bother her."
- Monotonous: Dull and repetitive. Example: "The monotonous hum of the fan put her to sleep."
These terms add depth to your speech, especially in learn english with youtube sessions focused on academic or analytical discussion.
How to Get the Accent Right
The speaker’s tone is reflective and deliberate, with pauses to emphasize key ideas—great for improve english pronunciation. Notice how words like "exist" and "desire" are stressed on the first syllable, and how "nothingness" flows with a soft "th" sound. To practice shadowspeaks, pause the video after short phrases (e.g., "the desire to not exist is the yearning to magically disappear") and repeat them, matching the pace and intonation. Pay attention to the rise and fall in questions like, "Is life a cruel angel's thesis?"—this natural rhythm will make your speech sound more native.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been born · is felt · must be asked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | everyone who longs · people who would · those who desire |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | we've already discussed · has acquired · have made |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.