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In Defense of Having No Idea What You’re Doing
Maybe life doesn’t know what it’s doing either
Once upon a time, humans noticed that we were existing and doing stuff. Life had always been existing and doing stuff, but it wasn’t until the self-aware quality of consciousness figured out this was happening that we began to wonder about it. So we started asking questions like, “Why are we existing and doing stuff? What’s the meaning of it? What is this life business anyway?”
The problem was, life hadn’t gotten that far yet. We’re life. If we’re asking the question, life doesn’t know the answer yet.
So we started making up answers, then building whole civilizations around these answers and enforcing these answers through violence. We killed each other over our answers. We died defending our answers. We still do today, ignoring the possibility — indeed, the relative probability — that life has no idea why any of this is happening.
There’s something about turning 30 that’s got me worrying about things I didn’t used to worry about. I’m still young, but I’m not “a youth” anymore, and the passing of my youth brings with it certain expectations about my seriousness. You know, career, achievement, all that jazz. There’s a fear I can’t quite shake that I’m supposed to have done something by now I haven’t done yet…
