You're Doing Fine. Keep Going. Don't Give Up.

You’re doing fine. Keep going. Don’t give up.

• You know that thing you are striving for? It doesn’t matter.
• You know that thing you’re worrying about right now? It doesn’t matter.
• You know that thing you want? It doesn’t matter.
• You know all those regrets you have about the past? Let them go, because they don’t matter.

You can just go to Crumbl and eat the entire box of super-sweet cookies. You can also run a triathlon. Whatever. You are free to be you. I give you persmission to chase your dreams, to follow your heart, to do that one thing you’ve been putting off for years. I also give you permission call in and lie in bed all day.

Because nothing matters. Let me explain:

The only real point to living is reproducing. The next question is, what’s the point of reproducing? The point of reproducing is reproduction, self-contained and circular and lacking any external justification. Our job as biological creatures is to spawn the next generation, so they too can reproduce, suffer, and die, just like us, and there’s no greater point. It is, as they say, not that deep. How do I know this? Because if humans stopped reproducing, nobody would notice, because there’s nobody out there to notice. That rubs us the wrong way, too, so much so that we create and maintain fictional beings just to give us that third-rail, someone outside of us who gives a damn about us. It is a sad state of affairs, how many people dedicate their lives to fictions, not because they are fictions, but because we are so desperate; deep down we are all in this position and there’s no way out, so we had to make it up. Squirrels and Manatees are not nearly as sad as us, by virtue of their complete dedication to living. We are the talking apes who are never satisfied with just living. We want something more. We want meaning, and we want it down to our bones, but meaning is the very thing that we can never have. We yearn for meaning in a universe that doesn’t offer it. We want something, down to our bones, that we can never have.

We yearn for meaning in a universe that doesn’t offer it. We want something, down to our bones, that we can never have.

Back in my twenties, I went through a process in which I began to understand that the system that was taught to me to combat the big silent universe was not actually based in reality. It is called Christianity. I’m not picking on Christianity. If I had been raised a Confuscian, I would say exactly the same thing. Christianity is just the preferred system we use in the West. Back then, it felt like I had been lied to all my life, by my parents, by my church, by my preacher, this entire network of people committed to spreading the falsehood. When I fully understood that, I was resentful for a good many years, and I set about writing and talking about it, and I came out publicly as an atheist. I’d get on Facebook and go to rhetorical battle Christians because I saw them as possessed of a false consciousness, and it was my job to little by little get them to see that.

I was deeply unwise to do that. Not because it was a bad thing to do in and of itself (nothing matters, remember?), but because I was wasting my time and energy. I cared far too much about what other people thought. It doesn’t matter what other people believe, and I should not care about that at all. Once I understood that Christianity is just a system to combat the the inherent meaninglessness of life, a mostly nonsensical system, but a system nonetheless, I no longer felt like I was getting anything out of begrudging people their savior-figure if it helped them get by, because that’s all I am trying to do, too. I’m just trying to get by.

My middle age has I hope brought me more wisdom than I had back then, so today I am much more live-and-let-live, and I want all of my Christian friends to grow in their Christianity, to have enthusiastic Bible studies and gatherings, and for it all to be just awesome, and even invite me to the Bible study, because I like the Bible. I’m not a Christian, but I still would like to talk about it with well-meaning people, but no one invites me. See, I want everybody out there to get a chance to live a good life, and if Jesus helps, Jesus helps. I don’t begrudge anyone their coping systems anymore. We are all in this together, and no one gets out alive. You can see this yearning for meaning on Facebook if you have the right friends who post these pleading Jesus-memes 24/7. They are begging, pleading, for this life to add up to something. They want it down to their bones. I want it down to my bones, too.

In my late middle age, I can look back on what I call the Main Flow of human existence, a period of human life that ranges from approximately the age of 15-40, that window of a person’s life in which they mate and reproduce, and I can look back and see myself acting according to my programming, quite mindlessly pursuing women so that I could impregnate them. That was never my goal, to impregnate, but I was driven to do pursue them. It was the primary goal of my entire existence. Why? Programming. Hard-wiring. It is bracing as Hell to look back and see myself performing a role by rote, quite mindlessly, almost as if I am some kind of talking ape . . .

Then, when I had a child, and I held her in my arms for the first time, two things happened. My heart exploded in love, and then it melted into sadness. It hit me then, in that very moment, that I’d created a being whom I love more intensely than anything, but that she was doomed to experience suffering and ultimately death just like me. It is simultaneously the best thing I’ve ever done and the worst thing I’ve ever done. Talk about a mind-fuck. Now I understand it doesn’t matter if you have kids. If doesn’t matter if you don’t. If I could have one wish in the world, it would be that my daughters didn’t have to suffer and die, that they could remain young and healthy forever, and only die if and when they decided they wanted that. Wanting things I can’t have, though, is a recipe for misery, so I’ve had to let that go, write it off because ultimately it doesn’t matter. Nothing does.

Asking the so-called big-questions, which I have done, and done, and done, turned over in my mind interminably, hoping, yearning, wanting some kind of answer, thinking that if I can just find this one philosopher who has figured something out. Schopenhauer? Cioran? Camus? Maybe they discovered this one thing that I’ve missed. I understand now that I will never get an answer, and that asking these questions is pointless, and I am ready here and now to move on from that, to stop doing this, and try to live my life with as much tranquility and calm as I can possibly muster.

This is what I want to say to you, reader: If you find yourself in a meaning crisis, asking these big questions like: Is there a God? What is the meaning of all this? Stop. Read your Bible. Turn on the televison, or stare at your phone at some distracting content, or go to Church and worship your God, or go bowling, anything but continuing to dwell on those questions, because you will never get an answer. Distract yourself back to the present in any way you can, and live your life now. If the religious systems actually work for you, buy in whole hog. Go for it with all of your being. Same thing with comic books or video games or makeup or TikTok videos. Jump in whole hog and forget about the big questions. If there’s any point to life at all, it is life itself, being present now while you are alive. It is hard. I have had to work at it, but you don’t want to be like me if Jesus works for you, you know? You get this prepackaged system, and you don’t have to work so hard. Just buy in.

For those of us who can’t buy in, we need to go easy on everyone else and let them have their systems. We need to be in solidarity with them because we are all in the same miserable position. Life is absurd. We are talking apes who seek meaning in a meaningless universe, all careening toward exactly the same end, and we need to go easy on each other between now and then. This is where I find my love for humanity.

Live your best life. Live your worst life. It doesn’t matter, so breathe. You’re doing fine. Keep going. Don’t give up.