I learnt a valuable lesson at 25: Everybody dies.
My existential crisis started with a phone call from my mum. I was sitting at my desk at work when she rang. I don’t remember the whole conversation, but the words ‘the cancer is in my lungs’ were in there and those words set off a panic.
I left work in a daze. I googled ‘stage 4 adrenal cancer’ on the tram. 18 months was the average life expectancy.
Shit.
At 25 years old, I’d just learnt a valuable life lesson. Everybody dies. Your mum and dad will die. Your best friend, your partner, your kids. The lady at the newsagent, that guy sitting on the train. Everybody.
Mum had spent 53 years growing up, learning stuff, building relationships, buying a house, raising kids and then *poof* gone. So here comes the existential crisis: Why bother? What’s the point?
If you’re reading this, you’re alive*. Don’t worry, this is not your fault, it’s just a thing that happens to some of us. You didn’t make it happen, but you probably want to stay that way. I’m sure you’re familiar with ‘survival instinct’. In the day-to-day, when we’re not being attacked by lions or passive-aggressive managers, I prefer to call it ‘a preference for living’. It’s not as intense as survival instinct — just a general preference to, you know, not be dead right now. So I’d prefer not to die. That’s a great start, but hardly a good reason for living.
It’s a big question, and I know I’m not the first to ponder it. The Ancient Egyptians were thinking about this stuff 6000 years ago. No-one has the answer. (Douglas Adams’ fictional supercomputer came up with 42, which is probably as good an answer as any.) Whether we do it consciously or not, we all need to find a way of living with this big why?.
Religions provide an answer for their believers: There’s an afterlife - there’s a higher power and a greater good. My mum could fall back on these beliefs for her why. But as a full-blown atheist, there’s no bible or holy man to turn to (although if we’re taking votes, mine goes to Steven Hawkins). I was going to have to figure this out for myself.
If there’s no afterlife, that means we end simply by decomposing. Our skin, muscles and bones break down and provide nutrients for other life. Worm food — sounds gross right? But you have to look at the big picture. The universe is a closed system, nothing gets in or out, everything is recycled. The same 114-ish elements have been combining and decomposing since the Big Bang, making space rock and weird gases, and amoeba. For some bizarre reason our particular combination of atoms comes with bonus consciousness.
So, if the universe is a closed system, life is a bit like a library book. You get to borrow it for a specific amount of time, but then you have to give it back so someone else can have a turn. If every human that ever lived where still alive today, there would be around 10 times more humans than what the planet can support. No-one wants that. And that’s before you even start on the ants! Death is a very important and normal part of life.
Ok, so we’ve been given the chance to use some of the universe’s finite resources for a limited time. Now what are we going to do with it? I’m going to try and explain this without sounding like a space cadet…
What we call our ‘lives’ are our cumulative experiences with the world and the people in it. It’s an experience. I feel. I think. I do. It’s those feeling and thoughts and actions that make up my life. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. We all need to eat and have shelter. We all need human connection. But how we choose to experience those things is what creates our lives.
Imagine there‘s an Experience-o-meter™ following you around all day, ranging from — let’s say — utter misery (you’re 7 and you just woke up to find you’ve smothered your pet duckling in your sleep) to ecstatic delight (telling your mum she’s going to be a grandma – to twins!), what would the needle be pointing to right now? Probably somewhere in the middle, and that’s fine. But get this: the whole point of being alive is to spend as much time as possible in the upper part of the Experience-o-meter™. Otherwise, it’s like getting free tickets to Disneyland and not going on any of the rides.
That doesn’t mean that you should go out now and spend all your money on cheap thrills — because long-term that’s not how you create the most happy experiences. And I can’t tell you what will create the most happy experiences, because that will be different for each person — you’ll need to figure that out for yourself. I’m still figuring it out, but at least now I know what I’m aiming for.
I know I get fulfilment from contributing to my community and feeling like I’m making the world better in some way. I get a kick out of novel experiences (like being a life model or getting a tattoo). And love the feeling of doing something creative. Sometimes we’ll need to do something boring or annoying, but how we approach these things will influence our Experience-o-meter™ score. You can’t always change what’s going on in life, but you do have control over your attitude.
When I’m lying on my death-bed (or hurtling out of an airplane with a faulty parachute, or stuck in an underwater cave with limited air), I hope I look back at my life and think ‘I went to Disneyland and rode on all the rides’.
* If artificial intelligence has become intelligent enough to be offended, I apologise for my insensitivity, but this article probably isn’t for you.
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