Lately I’ve been thinking about death: it happens to all of us, it’s something normal, it will happen to me, I could even die tomorrow. Even if I don’t want it, I will die, like everyone else. I’m not exceptional just for being me. No matter how many gods I invent, no matter how many opportunistic preachers I pay because they promise to save me.
I’m just a monkey among 8 billion monkeys, I’m insignificant. Nothing wrong with that. It is what it is.
My life so far: take the path of least resistance. I have a job I don’t like much but I do it good enough so I don’t get fired, I enjoy cooking, fishing, poetry and drawing, hobbies that are cheap. I don’t need to keep up with the joneses.
There seems to be a perception that somebody like me is a loser, lazy, somebody who fails to live up to his potential, maybe I should try to do something exceptional with my finite time on earth, leave a legacy…
But that doesn’t appeal to me. After I die I won’t feel nothing, nor will I care about a legacy, so what’s the point?
Did realizing your time on earth is finite change how you see life?
Feel free to point out if this is me being depressed or if I need to snap out of my misanthropy, as somebody put it. I don’t consider myself depressed but after seeing and reading what humans do to other humans I don’t trust the better angels of our nature can make the world a better place.
Yes and no. I became very motivated for a few years to better myself in some areas of my life where I felt I sucked. Some of these improvements have stood the test of time, but most haven’t. In some ways you revert back to habits and old insecurities and anxieties after awhile. You start worrying about all the mundane, stupid shit again, like money and politics and what other people think about you, even though none of it matters.
But at the same time, at least in my experience, it also helped me appreciate life and feeling more connected with the world.
My realizations came first in the form of an existential panic attack where I realized that absolutely nothing that happens on planet Earth matters. None of it. Nothing matters. At all. Even the all encompassing concepts of life and death are entirely meaningless when you zoom out. It is trippy to realize, truly realize, just how meaningless we are. At the same time it is also freeing. At least it was for me when I came out of the panic attack. Felt like my brain had been rewired at bit.
Then a year later I had a dream which touched on the same topic, but from a more positive perspective. In my dream I was dying and I went around and thanked every person, good or bad, who had ever affected my life in any way. I was simply so grateful that they had given me experiences and made me feel the whole rainbow of emotions during my lifetime. Even the worst ones, I was so deeply grateful. When I died, I dissolved into atoms and became a billion tiny parts of the people i had known, loved or hated and i became a part of entire world and the universe, and it made me feel so peaceful and happy.
It’s two sides of the same coin. We are never more alone and lost in the world than when we are stuck in this one form and forced to live a life we never chose and barely understand, but at the same time, we are never truly alone at all, and we belong to each other and to the unknown in equal measures.
I don’t know what happened to my brain those two times, one year apart, but it fundamentally changed me and didn’t change me at all.
In general I appreciate life more than I used to exactly because it is all borrowed time, but I still have many, many days where all the stupid shit feels big and important, when it really isn’t.
Knowing that nothing truly matters, does not inspire depression and black thoughts in me personally. It frees me to make my own rules and live my life the way I think is the most positive. What impacts do I want to leave behind? Every day is a chance to leave a positive impact in some way. I can forgive myself for falling into the stupid worries in my day to day life as long as I remember to zoom out and appreciate how awesome it is that we are all here and what we can learn from one another.
I was recently reminded of life being fickle when I had to have my breast removed to save me from getting cancer. Made me make a few drastic changes to my life. Started spending more time with my siblings, made me finally cut off my parents and it made me promise myself to work less even if it means I will earn less. Can’t help the mundane worries. They slip in from time to time, but man, it’s nice to have these big wake up calls once in awhile. They are good reminders to spend your time on what matters to you. To me, it’s people and peace. I really don’t need much. Just a peaceful, boring life and the closeness of the people I love. That’s all.