What's The Point?

The ListServ email today was from someone who was asking if others sometimes felt like things were pointless. Not depressingly so, just a "what's the point?" sort of feeling. I wrote back the following:

  I totally understand your feeling. Sometimes, I think we all feel that way. But I know for sure I do. I am an atheist and sometimes, when times are tough, I feel like what is the point of it all. I don't believe there is a 'higher being' or that there is a purpose to existence. I consider it all a happy accident. But, then I wonder if awareness was the worst thing evolution gave humans. We could have just been blissfully ignorant, like the rest of the creatures on Earth. Instead, we sit and wonder why.

Then I think more and turn it around. A quote I heard once helped. "You are the universe experiencing itself." I don't take this as the universe being "aware", but I do like the idea that, if it weren't for us, this would all go on unnoticed, so to speak. So, we get to use our eyes and experience to look around and marvel at the wonders, lament the sadness and just experience life. We will be gone one day, but we have to hope, in some small, almost infinitesimal way, we made things a little better for others. Or we some how document what we see and feel, through writing or art or something.

At worst, it just means we were briefly here, enjoying the wonder of that happy accident. At best, we make it better for those yet to open their eyes.

My thoughts.

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