We spend our days bound by endless obligations. Yet, even with loneliness, failed relationships, and soul-draining work, people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why?
Because life is its own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It’s only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose – we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach – who cannot find enough in life to be happy.
To make evil men and women powerful.
There is no point. This life is what you get. It’s up to you to make something of it.
Whatever you decide to make of it, which is an incredibly beautiful thing.
The meaning of life is to have a life full of meaning.
I find meaning by doing drugs and hooking up with randoms from growlr.
First existential crisis? There’s isn’t one. Once you make peace with that fact then you can overcome the existential dread of oblivion and move on content in the understanding that nothing you do matters in the long run, and focus your energy on something else.
If something happens after we die, what’s the point of it all?
No matter if anything happens after death or not, or what happens, we can not know and we don’t seem to be able to comprehend it either way. So we can not know if what we have got is comparatively good or bad. The only thing left is to make the best of it. Because why not?
Well, that’s kinda the point.
If you assume that all we get is what we have while we’re alive, then that life becomes the point
A lot of people that reach the conclusions you have, opt out. They move into a commune, they go vagabond, they may choose to just flit between jobs and find whatever fun is in them.
Or, they may decide to become focused on finding purpose within the world that is, the societal structures as they exist. Some of those devote themselves to service, or find jobs that they believe make life better for others.
Some stay in the framework of things, but do the bare minimum and focus on their off time their purpose.
The point of it, from that point of view where this is all we get, is to find what makes staying alive worth it.
It isn’t like the certainty of no afterlife removes your ability to live and love and do good things. It can make it harder to bear the bad things of life as well, but that’s anything really.
The point is what you decide it is.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Time, and how you use it, becomes more important once you understand that it’s finite.
Well written!
What do we owe to each other? For coexistence without inherent meaning in an afterlife, is the only source of moral good the social contract that we’ve made with each other to coexist peacefully? What are the bounds of that contract? What are the terms of our coexistence?
If that’s the case, a Buddhist would have nothing to worry about! And a Christian would be in shambles I guess.
Whatever you want. Find something that brings you joy and try to do more of that. If it’s important to you to leave a legacy, try to connect to others and be in their lives. Try to make good, meaningful changes to the world, even if they’re small. Our existences are only so long, and worth enjoying.
The chances that there this nothing waiting for us after death are laughably slim, especially as we make more discoveries about death and quantum phenomenon
Read into NDEs
