As I approach 40, I’m reckoning with my own mortality; no longer a young adult but not yet middle aged, I ponder the meaning of life.
Experience has shown me there is no grand plan, no reason for everything. We’re just bags full of chemicals rolling around the mud ball we call Earth.
That we were born or not was a dice roll thrown by the universe. Who we are, what we do, who we love? All meaningless in the end.
Just like life.
Everything that lives must die. It is the nature of the young to supplant the old. Everything eventually breaks, even us.
We might think we’re special, but on the cosmic scale we’re dust in the wind. One day soon we will die, one day we will be forgotten, one day the stars will burn out and the universe will cease expanding and collapse.
Next to that, what meaning does our fart of an existence have? I’ll tell you: none, except that which we give them.
Therein lies the great horror and the great joy. We can be slaves to this harsh reality or be the captains of our fate.
How we look at it is up to us.