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The Ultimate Cosmic Joke: What to Do In a Universe That Makes Your Life a Comedy

The Cosmic Joke: we have infinite potential but only limited time.

Charles Black M.D.
Mind Cafe
6 min readDec 13, 2024

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Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

Humans aren’t perfect, but that hasn’t stopped us from achieving extraordinary things. Given enough time and effort, there is no telling what you could accomplish, from learning a new language to mastering the violin and writing an epic novel, all while building the dream home you designed yourself.

But you don’t have unlimited time. At most, you have a few good decades to accomplish all you will. That is it. Then, time is up, and all you have done is all you will ever do.

Your challenge is to determine the best way to use your limited time. With nearly endless options, this can be an overwhelming dilemma that no one can solve for you.

I can tell you what not to do. Don’t trick yourself into thinking you can avoid making difficult choices through increased productivity or self-improvement. No time-hack will get you out of this cosmic quagmire.

Since you can’t do everything, you must decide what is worth doing and what is not. How do you choose?

The Problem

You are a human with all the existential baggage that comes with that. You have vast…

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Mind Cafe
Mind Cafe

Published in Mind Cafe

Relaxed, inspiring essays about happiness.

Charles Black M.D.
Charles Black M.D.

Written by Charles Black M.D.

Dr. Charles Black is a general surgeon, author, photographer, outdoorsman, world traveler and fireside philosopher. Website:https://chuckbphilosophy.com

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