The Liberating Power of Insignificance

Earth orbits a star that is one of 200-400 billion in the Milky Way galaxy. There are an estimated 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. The universe has existed for over 13 billion years. The universe is expanding and increasing in entropy. It is predicted to eventually reach a state of ultimate entropy sometime after 10¹⁰⁰ years in the future. Long before that, the Sun will expand to be a red giant star, and engulf the earth's orbit (approximately 5.4 billion years). Long before that, changes on the earth will cause all life to die out (approximately 2.3 billion years). Long before that, the human species is predicted to have died out (somewhere I read human beings are probably in the midlife of their existence). There may or may not be other sentient species to arise on Earth. It all depends on whether sentience is adaptive to changing environments. So in cosmic terms, as a species we are utterly insignificant, existing en toto for a very brief time in a very limited location.

Within this utterly insignificant species, an individual life is even more insignificant. I am one of 7 billion people on the planet. There have been billions before, and probably billions after me. I do not matter in history. I matter even less in the cosmic reach of the universe.

For some people, this would be a depressing thing to realize. I find it exhilarating. Born into religious fundamentalism, I was raised to think that my every thought and action was rife with horrifying, eternal significance. The way I spoke to another person, even the thoughts I didn't verbalize about him, could not only damn me for all eternity, but set off a chain reaction of human behaviors in others that could damn a whole slew of people. I could destroy lives for eternity through carelessness.

Please tell me how a seven-year-old child is supposed to carry this burden?

In light of such an upbringing, to discover I mean absolutely nothing in the universe is liberating. I don't have to worry so much about my actions, because whatever effects I have, they are extremely limited in time and in space. The cosmos will not be greatly affected when I fuck up.

This is the liberating power of insignificance.

I Don't Know How to Do This

A couple of days ago I wrote that life is a job, and implied that one of the most basic aspects of that job is to make life have meaning.

I know that the meaning of my life is entirely up to me, for me to create. I've come to see that this isn't some diktat from some being of a higher order making demands of me based on some responsibility contract I was forced to sign by being born, as if I'd coerced my parents into making me, rather than the other way around. No, there's no entity arbitrarily demanding I get to work at meaning-making. Rather this is simply a law of the universe, like the physics of gravity or the dharmic laws of cause and effect. It just is. The responsibility to make meaning out of one's life is like the responsibility to eat if one wants to live. It is simply a fact of the human condition. I'm beholden to no one, but I am vastly beholden to myself.

The problem is that I feel I lack the skill set to create meaning for my life. If someone has been indoctrinated— dare I say brainwashed?— for the first three-fifths of his life, the "formative years", to believing that the meaning for his life comes from an all-powerful entity given to mercurial moodswings and tyrannical rulership, it's hard to take control of life for oneself. In other words, I was taught throughout my childhood, youth and young adulthood, that God had plans, that God had given me my life's meaning, etc. So I not only received no training in meaning-making, I was discouraged from even questioning it. I just don't know how to do this.

I can of course think critically. I can weigh options. I can say, well, I like this, I loathe that, I don't give a shit about the other. But I cannot find the wherewithal within me to feel passionate about anything. The closest I come to passionate is anger over the way I was raised. And even that is mitigated by feeling sorry for my parents, who were so smart and so clueless at the same time. I have no burning desire to accomplish any particular thing; I have no "great work" waiting to be done.

So here I am. I'm freaked out about being old and alone, and completely unable to find a mate. I'm adrift in a life that has no inherent meaning, and feel ill-equipped to create that meaning. I have no real career, no real family and nothing to look forward to except getting older, uglier and more alone.

Bear with me; I'm still trying to figure this out.