Lately, I’ve been thinking about why we do this. Live, that is. It’s exhausting, it’s painful, and in the grand scheme of the universe, what we do means absolutely nothing. What joy or comfort we bring to ourselves and others is fleeting and impermanent. So why do we keep going? What’s the point?
There isn’t. And that’s the point. I’ll explain, I promise.
Even before I realized what it was, I struggled with mental darkness. Suicidal ideations have plagued me for years, not in the form of plans or action, but in the desire to go to sleep and not wake up. In high school and college it was easier to ignore. I was too busy, tired, and/or preoccupied to spend any real time or energy focusing on why every action feels like a chore.
The pandemic, of course, gave me ample time to take that leap into my own mind but I was afraid to give those thoughts any of myself. I was, as most of us were, more isolated than I had ever been and was working through that nasty little “sleeping through meals” problem I developed in college. It wasn’t until I moved to New York and understood real freedom for the first time that I realized how trapped I was. How trapped we ALL are in our infinite and overwhelming unimportance. It’s ironic that at my most free, I felt my most stuck.
I reached one of my lowest points in November of 2022. I had thought about dying for years, but I never considered actually taking the steps. So, when I entered the kitchen and had a very clear vision of myself using a butterknife to open up my left forearm (vertical for results), I was quite surprised. Not at the absolute stupidity of thinking I could kill myself with a butterknife (I’d have better luck with a piece of paper), but at the fact that with no prompting or impetus, my brain could make that leap. My mind made it look so easy. Spooky stuff, indeed.
Of course I sought therapeutic and psychiatric help (anybody else take a little “happy pill” every day) but I changed something else that day. Until that point, I had run myself ragged admonishing myself for not sending every waking moment on developing my career or working in some capacity towards the life I want. My world view was completely shrouded in the idea that hard work meant no stopping points. The constant hustle. Before I could make any headway into tackling the burnout that helped exacerbate my desire to disappear, I had to change my mindset. That began with an epiphany.
Death is coming. It is the threshold every living creature will cross. The ultimate human experience. When I fantasize or worry about when that time will end for me, I remind myself that it will come regardless of whether or not it’s my choice. I might as well stick around, if for no other reasons than entertainment value and curiosity.
This mindset change wasn’t a cure-all, however. If death was coming for us all, then what difference do the maybe 40/50 extra years we give ourselves make. My current view of mortality rests on the conclusion that those years don’t matter. None of them do. So then, I ask myself, what makes any of this have meaning? What makes this endless cycle of living and feeling and struggling and dying we all undertake worth the trouble? For that answer, I turn to the Law of Conservation of Energy.
As with mass, energy cannot be created nor can it be destroyed. It simply shifts from one state to the next. Always moving and always present. Accepting the universe as infinite and undying, our actions on this planet are meaningless when compared to the breadth of a never-ending reality. Even if we do something to completely redefine this planet, Earth will die when the Sun cools in a couple billion years. And if we make it off this planet, the next one may be obliterated in a supernova or swallowed by a black hole. Humans may make it to a planet we thought habitable only to encounter a devastating cataclysm.
Keeping this in mind, I have rested on a philosophy of life a friend called “Optimistic Nihilism.” Because the universe is infinite, our actions mean nothing. It is impossible for us to take action that will result in any absolute permanence. So the reason for existing is simply to exist. In an infinite universe, the particles and energy that have existed forever have come together to create me for the short time I have. To create you for yours. Even in a reality where odds are obsolete, there is an almost zero percent chance of us existing again as we do now on this planet. So our fleeting human emotions and conflicts and struggles give us a reason to experience them. We are the only versions of us that ever will. The joy we feel will only ever be felt by us. Same for the triumph, the love, the sorrow, the impermanence. And because our lives have no real lasting impacts, our deaths won’t either. The reason for living is to live. To experience. In my mind, there is simply no reason not to.
A mindset change doesn’t magically solve problems. As is the nature of humanity, I get stuck in mental paradoxes and spirals. I have trouble turning off the noise in my head. But I am content to see where my time in this vast, magical, incomprehensible universe will take me. I am content to see who’s fleeting, unimportant human experiences pass mine and what joy or art can only be made from our innate individuality.
And who knows, I may change my mind about all of this. My view may shift. I may lose hope; may decide I’m more important than I am; may decide love will endure beyond all of us. But I will stick around to see those changes. There is only one me. There will only ever be one me. So, I intend to see how far this me can go.