A Simple Reason to Stop Being Nervous About Everything
Can you spot the answer in the picture?
You are somewhere here. You can’t see you. It’s too far away. But you’re definitely here. On planet Earth.
You don’t know why or for what. No one does.
All you know, all I know, is that you’re somewhere here, magnetized by this strange lushly coated wet rock floating in its designated position of endless nothing.
This rock you’re on, it’s tiny, and you’re tiny compared to this rock. You’re so tiny that even your tiny brain can’t comprehend how tiny you are. Your tiny self is posted up on this tiny rock surrounded by this dark massive unending space that could be anything and nothing at the same time.
This rock will give you life. It will give you everything you need to live on its crust for some time. It may feel like a while, or it might feel like no time at all, depending on what mood you’re in when you consider this idea.
Everything dies eventually
Regardless of how it feels to you when compared to everything else your life is very short. A single frame in a movie that never ends. A single frame that could be removed and nothing would change about the movie.
In this frame, you live on this rock.
Then you’ll die.
And you’ll have no idea what happened. No one will.
If you’re really lucky you’ll have some friends and family and lovers who’ll be sad for a little while. They’ll miss you but they’ll try hard not to. Because being sad and missing someone all the time is tiresome.
It’ll mess up their lives, so they’ll try to work through it and move on as best they can. They might go to therapy, they might practice techniques to get through grieving.
They’ll probably be somewhat successful.
They will also die.
If you’re even more unusually lucky, you’ll be missed and remembered for a little bit longer by a few more people. Perhaps you did something that impacted more people while you lived on this rock.
Perhaps you were profoundly artistic or smart or a leader or an inventor. When you die perhaps more people will be sad for a little more time. Most of these people would have never really known you though, so they won’t think about you too much for too long either. And when they do, it’ll mostly be a misconstruction of you based on their ideals.
They’ll all die.
Over time, every person, every memory of a person will all die.
This won’t matter to you, to me, to anyone.
We’ll all be dead.
The things you did, the words you said, the impact you made for good or bad, for big or small, they’ll all lose your nametag and will not matter to anyone or anything.
Our Insignificance Is Liberating
So whatever you’re nervous about right now, whoever you’re nervous because of — perhaps a first date, a job interview, a big presentation, an important test, a hard conversation — you might feel paralyzed with anxiety; you might feel the course of your life is hinged on this coming moment; that the fate of life is on your shoulders.
It’s not.
You might be worried that you’re going to do the wrong thing or fail. You might.
But everything will be okay.
Because for some reason against all conceivable odds, you’re on this weird rock; this planet that births life; the life that births more life; brainless life, intelligent life, you.
In this unknowable vacuum of potential nihility, you have this playground, this consciousness, this capacity for wonder, emotion, and thought.
The only real mistake you can make is to not recognize this; to never relax and enjoy the hilarious and enthralling absurdity of it all; to realize that it all means nothing beyond itself and to find freedom and inspiration in this thought; to explore and connect with what it can mean to be you — on a rock, in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a universe, in a who knows what; To be kind and decent, to have fun; To love, to laugh, to cry, to try, to fail, to live. And to remember that no matter what, you can still do all of this.
No matter what you do in life, the worst case is you try your best, you’re yourself, and you do what you can do with compassion, honesty, effort, and understanding and then you move on.
Like everything else…
