How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?
Rant: This has been keeping me up at night for way too long and every time I think about it I feel like am literally choking on my own thoughts. I have other shit to do but everything seems so inconsequential next to this. I just can’t comprehend why or how the universe even exists or how a bunch of atoms can think or that quantum mechanics literally revealed that the world is not loaded when you are not looking like how tf do you know that I am observing something.
Btw I am not looking for a purpose in life although this may be interpreted as me asking for that.
If anyone has the same problem as me good luck my friend just know that you are not alone.
I agree with many here in that I expect not to be any more inconvenienced by death than I was before I was born.
A thought that I appreciate that others haven’t mentioned is: The atoms that currently happen to think they’re me have previously thought they were a fish or a raccoon or a different person, or whatever, and they will, eventually, again.
Since my life is probably just ripples on a pond, I am motivated to, ideally, make an interesting, pleasant splash. I hope I’m remembered fondly for the brief time (cosmically) that I’m remembered at all.
I also hope (perhaps against reason) that humanity (and whatever replaces us) are growing more compassionate, so that whatever interesting form my current atoms might join next may also have a decent time, and have a chance to leave more pleasant memories in others.
(And hey, maybe there’s an afterlife. If so, maybe whoever runs it isn’t one of the assholes that the con artists tell us to expect. Or if they are one of those assholes we’ve been promised, maybe they can be distracted and assassinated. I plan to be ready to roll with it, just in case.)
Really liked how you worded that. It reminded me of this video about afterlife I rewatch when I’m having an existential crisis. One quote from the video,
“Ironically enough the only part of me that is immortal, for all intents and purposes, is my material body. Because after I die, and after our Sun dies, and after the planetary nebula it leaves behind fades away, every atom of me will be recycled back into the universe. Ultimately becoming part of other planets and stars. We are originally star dust literally, and we will be star dust again.”
I haven’t thought about the fact that I (what makes me up) might someday be reborn into another form in this way. It is a really comforting realasion l do thank you.