Do NOT read this post!

Life is meaningless.

This is not a cry for help. Nor an exhortation of pathos or extreme depression.

It is an epiphany.

I have understood this academically for most of my life. But recently … and I am not sure why … it could be something I ate … recently I truly came to UNDERSTAND this idea. Most of us spend our lives trying to find a REASON for our lives. We may not even realize we are doing this, but it is essentially the main driving force for everything we do. We create religions to give us the “hows” and “whys” of life. We follow career paths to create the “whats”. When we can’t figure the answers out ourselves, we let others tell us.

Why? Because I wanted to.

And it is all essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

The universe as a whole, in its inconceivable vastness, does not care what happens in our miniscule lives any more than most of us care about what any given quark pair is up to. WE may think our choices are of the utmost importance, but on a macrocosmic scale they really are not.

I am not saying that we should all just throw in the towel … life is meaningless … might as well just go hang out on a beach, daiquiri in hand, until I just fade away. I’m not saying that at all (though some might find the idea appealing). What I am saying is it is really up to each of us to create our own meaning … for each of us. We need to decide what WE want from life, and seek it out.

Think about it. The only reality we can be remotely sure of is our own experiential reality. Worse case scenario, EVERYTHING is just part of our imagination (including ourselves). Are we really going to let hypothetical us (or worse yet, hypothetical THEM), tell the REAL us what is important? Nothing worse than being bullied by our own imagination of how we THINK we should be … based on our imagination of what hypothetical others think the hypothetical us should be.

Take a sec. It DOES make sense.

Ultimate message: Do what makes YOU happy. Don’t let ANYONE else tell you what they think you should be doing. YOU choose. Once you take control of what you WANT, want you NEED to make it happen will manifest itself.

It really is THAT simple.