We All Fail This Math Test
Tell me - what does it all add up to? Your life, his life, their life?
I kind of see life as a form of melting.
I mean, you are young, “hard” and just out into the hot air of life. So you walk along and last quite well, melt very little.
Then, the heat hits you. Life hits you. You begin to melt. First, just a little, it’s imperceptible. A bad day every now and then, you notice it.
But soon enough, the real melting begins. You can’t do the same things you used to. Entropy kicks in, really kicks in. You walk much slower.
Then one day, you don’t move anymore. The ground receives you with open arms. You’ve melted and are gone.
What does it all add up to?
Your whole life adds up at the end of the day, into a bit of dust in a urn. You’re insignificance is soon complete as people move on, wipe away their tears and you are forgotten. Some forgotten sooner, some forgotten much later - but all forgotten eventually.
All the things you’ve done in life - just gone. What mattered? What did this life total? Does anyone have an answer?
Where is the life we’ve lost in living? T.S. Eliot
The purpose of life is to live. That’s all. And after you’ve lived, after you’ve totally melted, whatever. I’m essentially replying like Krishna to Arjuna’s dilemma of the Bhagavad Gita. Play your role. Don’t ask questions. You are necessary but you’ll never know why.
Now, you may have a certain belief that is different than this. But I’d argue it is just there to help you NOT confront this existential crisis and moment. And that’s fine. Perhaps it is even superior to living with the truth that our lives don’t count individually.
And that’s the rub. Even though individually our lives are insignificant, we are part of a whole. I wrote previously about this here - writing about the 1,000s killed from the bellow of a volcano.
We do count within the whole, on the macro scale. We are part of something much bigger. We live in its service. And as we procreate, add nitrogen to the earth, as we melt, we keep the big thing, that whole mysterious ether, moving along.
So yes, you are necessary. Not special but necessary. Don’t think otherwise. It’s just that you gotta melt.
Who Knows?
I don't know what our purpose is here.
Maybe my purpose is
to have no purpose
a witness only,
a standing lamp at
the back of the stage
Death Of A Salesman,
to pulled out and stood up
on the big night,
the rest of the time
dusty, un-needed, in a backroom
piled up with all the other rejects.
I look out on this world
from my mountain perch
and I don't understand a thing.
I'm really at a loss.
My mouth agape,
My heart and head blank
as we spin through
this terrible but beautiful now
of time and place.