Breaking out of Nihilism

A Reason to Live

Attempting to make sense of life is a common endeavour among effortlessly surviving human beings. For most people, the answer lies in some mystical, egocentric end. For some others, and me, it ends up with utter failure.

Recipe for Nihilism

Pre-decided religion for me was Islam. I did not grow religious. Nobody forced me to practice nor believe. For some reason, the belief system had my attention. Sitting at the front desk in my fourth grade class with my chicken legs, I read a short biography of Muhammad. His tragic life made me think, “how sane this person could be?”. Then came the dialogs in the cave. It was not long after that I made up my mind. Ever since, the beliefs left me for good.

Wind forward ten years and I am twenty. I decided to start reading. Better late than never right? So I did. I mostly enjoyed (and still do) pyhsics. Hawking, Sagan, Feynman… Then dipped my toe into literature. I was just easing into it so I met Mr. Hemingway.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Followed by some philosophy: Nietszche, Schopenhauer… I surrounded myself with pessimism. And I could not help but agree to these men. The vast universe, us being biological puppets, all these ideas point to the same direction: There is no meaning. There never has been and there won’t ever be.

Enters David Hume

If someone with the understanding of these writers was ever to glance at my consistently growing library, with the perfect topping of On Suicide by Hume would fear for my future. Not distant future; next month, next week, tomorrow...

I sympathise the institution for suicide. But I never wanted to. I had no reason for it. I was living the good life. The life only 1% of the world population had access to. Of course I wasn’t constantly happy, but then, nobody is right?

Solitude

Thats me. Though there is obviously somebody else taking the photo.

I love nature. More than ever for the last few years. I watched the movie In to the Wild, read Walden by H. David Thoreau, Call of the Wild by Jack London. I started to think maybe it is the concrete and the cars that I have to run away from. Maybe for some people, that is the answer. But I then realized, for me, that it is merely a shadow of dream. I could not feel certain of not being haunted by these thoughts even at the ends of the World.

The answer for me, was to be found somewhere not far away.

Not the Light at the End of the Tunnel, But the Light Within

Alright. I got it figured out. I don’t matter. Nobody and nothing does. A hundred years from now and everyone I ever knew will be dead. A billion years from now, life on Earth may reach its expiry date.

Maybe I should have read Carl Sagan more carefully. Only now I truly understand what he meant when he said:

We are a Way for Cosmos to Know Itself

Photo by Sweet Ice Cream Photography on Unsplash

Within this one little sentence, that astonishingly profound sentence… The reason for life, is to be found here.

We are not some random byproduct of the Big Bang. We are the Big Bang. A tiny part of this big drama. Our Sun, the Earth and every other planet, are formed by the ingredients of some other sun that scattered its atoms across the Universe. And my atoms came from those stars. I have a part to play. Just as trees and ants playing their parts. Then I will dissolve away and form other lives, earths and suns.

This association with the Universe that surrounds me, is almost spiritual. I am more than happy to not be some crafted being, and instead a particule drifting with the waves. I shall quote from Neil degrasse Tyson, whom I owe a great deal of these ideas:

I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up — many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.

We are part of this everlasting adventure. I am hubmled by the absence of focus and attention on me; just because I am a human. I hope to contribute to this process, in ways that I know to be the most constructive. I hope to live and love and help, to the extend of my reach. Then I will leave the stage, to the next generation of humans, jellyfish and oak trees, which will be formed out of my atoms as I did from other suns.