Words that make no sense!

When I write, I start to view the world that I’ve created through the eyes of my characters. My stories rarely mirror real life, in terms of universal laws. After some time, when the world has been properly established, I start to think of what the world I’ve made truly means for the people I've filled it with. In the long run, I mean. Not just the immediate consequences of the events of the story, but the fundamental truths that my characters have to deal with.

That doesn't really make much sense. Here, let me try it another way:

When I craft a fictional world, I first begin by deciding how it is physically different from our world. Is the technology different? Are there alien beings? Do supernatural forces interact with people in meaningful, important ways? Once I've established this, I begin writing.
Pages and pages into my stories, I inevitably encounter a philosophical or spiritual problem that needs addressing. Let’s say, for example, I've established that demons are real in my world. One of my characters stumbles upon a ritual site in the basement of an abandoned apartment building in Harlem, and he sees the man he’s been tailing sacrifice a goat to summon a demon. What does that imply about what happens to my characters when they die? Does that mean there’s a Hell? And if so, does that mean there’s a God? Is there an all-knowing force that arbitrates whether my characters suffer for eternity or not?

Eventually I settle on Yes, the presence of a demon means there’s a Hell. No, that doesn't necessarily imply that there is a God, but people do have souls, and souls go somewhere when a person dies (probably Hell).

I’m rambling a bit.

My point is that I establish a metaphysical order to my stories because my narrative demands it. I start to envision the cosmology of these worlds and the position of humanity therein. My thoughts get so wrapped up in the whys and hows. I always write as if every line will be subjected to intense scrutiny by any possible readers, and so my universe needs to make sense.

But when I’m take a break from the story, I tend to have my lenses still attuned to the fictional world. I look up from my desk and I start to wonder why our universe, the one we are forced to live in, doesn’t make sense.

Because it doesn't, really.

At least that’s the thought that I always have. I turn that scrutinous, skeptical gaze to reality, and I start to get dreadfully frightened of what I find.

These last few weeks I’ve really felt that old familiar sting of existential nihilism. I can keep the specter of despair at bay with my writing, the people I love, and electronic entertainment, but in my idle moments my mind drifts to the thought that none of this really matters.

None of anything matters. We do what we do from day to day to keep us going, but in the backs of our minds, as we toil away at work or watch another season of Breaking Bad, the monster lurks. When we look up at the stars and see the impossible vastness of the universe, how little we matter really strikes home. Sure, on a personal level, you’re important. Maybe even on a local level. Heck, maybe you hold a relatively important job, and if you were to suddenly die then thousands of people would be distraught and/or also dead. But in the grand scheme of things, time will heal the wound of your passing. The people who mourn your death will die, and then no one will cry for you. The machine will keep moving.

That’s why we’re all so concerned with our legacies, I think. Whether it’s good or bad, we all want to leave an imprint on the world (no matter how fleeting that imprint may be). This is why I’ll never understand those people who give up their careers, their lives, and the people who love them to go off on a globe-trotting journey of self-discovery. If you've destroyed your legacy, then why do you even keep going? You’re like a neutered dog, only you don’t provide anyone with companionship.

It doesn’t matter if I make a lot of money. It doesn’t matter if I’m happy. In a billion years the sun will explode and all our faint radio waves will disappear into cosmic vapor. We’re all utterly insignificant, and powerless to change that.

At times I find this disturbing. Horrifying on a very deep, deep level. But other times (and this is the trick, I think), I find it wonderfully freeing.

None of anything matters, so who gives a fuck? We’re all just burning flesh, so who has the right to say what I can and cannot do?

My time as a living human being is of an unbelievably short duration on the cosmic level. The fact that I am what I am, that I am who I am, is so miraculously unique. 99.999999999% of the matter in the universe is unthinking and inert, and I’m lucky enough to be from the tiny bit that isn’t.

There is no God. There is no purpose to anything. No greater purpose, no destiny, no fate. Colossal, unstoppable forces work across the universe completely ignorant of the existence of humanity. Stars burn forever in the endless void for no reason. Entropy is constantly eating at the edges of life, which, frankly, is fighting a losing battle. It’s every property of the universe versus the childlike stubbornness that is organic life. Eventually entropy will win. It, like every other bleak outcome of existing, is inevitable.

The universe is uncaring, and it’s natural forces wick energy away ceaselessly. There is such a ridiculously tiny window in the span of time and space for me to exist, and yet here I am. The fact that I live day to day surrounded by people who love me, healthy and happy, is so astronomically unlikely.

And it’s because of that that I am happy. In the real world, outside of fiction, we are completely alone. We will eventually be crushed by the onslaught of the universe’s apathy, and we will blink out of existence like we never happened.

But for right now, we’re here. That’s what I love about us. Even when we all know that we are destined for oblivion, we still love and sing and create art and bake pies. I read somewhere once that human beings are possessed with an incurable optimism. We’re the only animals that can look into the abyss and say “oh shit” when we see nothing stare back. But where a rational intelligence would start committing mass suicide and hurrying the inescapable, we instead say “fuck it” and go paint pictures of sunsets.

I think I had a point somewhere in there, but I lost it.

Also I’m pretty sure I started this out talking about writing. How did I get away from that?

In any case, we’re all doomed, we all know it, and yet we continue to love each other. That’s why I love my life. The universe says it shouldn’t exist, but it does anyway. I love the spinning rock I'm on, and I love the people that infest it. I love. We all love. That's what defines us. As a species, we’ve created a new fundamental force in the universe. And it's our strongest weapon in the war against entropy.

Here’s to us, happy aberrations.