Are you certain you haven’t wasted a day of your life today? No? But you’ll never get that day back and don’t even know whether you’ll get another one!
The earth has a circumference of 40,075.017 kilometers. The sun’s circumference is 109 times that of the earth. VY Canis Majoris, a red hypergiant in the constellation Canis Major and the largest known star, is 1800 to 2100 times the size of our sun. We’re merely one itty bitty planet in one little solar system in just one big galaxy among many more. Then what are we doing wasting our insignificant, short lives by bringing suffering and pain to each other every day?
Yes, I just said humanity is insignificant. Besides its beauty, the most fascinating things about the universe are its unimaginable size and the incredible powers that indwell it to create stars like VY Canis Majoris and keep them from being ripped apart. Life is another one of its statistically unlikely “miracles”. The most important thing about it, however, is its ability to teach us about ourselves.
There I was, sitting in my cozily furnished room in my house, and suddenly I realized just how irrelevant we are. How meaningless time is the way we humans – tiny heaps of animated stardust – measure it. Even every cent of money more on your bank account than you need to live comfortably is worthless, unless you do something good with it. You can’t buy happiness and can’t bribe death or your conscience. My (to some probably radical) proposition is that, whoever doesn’t spend their life trying to bring as much beauty and happiness into this world as they can might as well not live at all.
I guess we all know of our insignificance, at least unconsciously. The Catholic church needed almost 300 years to accept Kopernikus’ finding that our solar system doesn’t revolve around humans. Young bullies victimize their schoolmates for the shallow gratification of dominance, instead of learning and showing compassion. Wars are fought to accumulate power and take it away from others to escape insignificance. But human power is an illusion. While trying to create the illusion of ones importance by using another illusion, one misguided person has killed or hurt another human being. For nothing but an illusion. Isn’t it paradoxical to try to escape insignificance by destruction?
We’ve been torturing each other over religious doctrines and gods, skin colors and political opinions. Just think about it, we’ve even been killing each other over love! A man kissing another man, a black person loving a white person: human beings trying to get that tiny piece of happiness each and every one of us long for, and some deem it so unacceptable they think they have to bring some more suffering upon them for it. What they fail to see is that by making another person suffer, they’ve done nothing to alleviate their own suffering either. Nobody has ever lost anything by sharing their happiness. Many people have already lost everything by disseminating their pain.
The reality is that there is only one human race and we’re insignificant. There is only one kind of love, though it comes in many flavors, and it is by far the most significant thing. Your god doesn’t matter and neither does mine, or the absence of your belief in one. We raise walls and create divisions where there wouldn’t and shouldn’t be any. Ultimately, every living being is driven by only two things: the longing for happiness and the wish to avoid suffering.
Bertrand Russell said that “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.” We must understand that destruction does nothing to alleviate our fears of meaninglessness and neither does it make a life worth living. Indeed, suffering is a potent reminder of our frail animal nature. It is only in happiness and joy, creation and beauty that we can find lasting satisfaction and can begin to conquer our fears.
Nobody said these things are always easily achieved, but they’re the only things that matter. We’re only visitors on this planet. The earth itself is only a visitor, a blip on the cosmic radar. Ultimately, not even Beethoven and Hitler matter, but there’s still an important difference between these two. Hitler wasted his life by bringing unfathomable destruction and suffering to his fellow humans. Beethoven made his life matter by having been a creator and leaving us with a great legacy of beauty.
You don’t need to be Beethoven to lead a meaningful life. Help the elderly lady or gentleman carry their groceries up the stairs. Donate blood. Try to be nice to the grumpy customer who’s tugging at your nerves. Who knows what made them so grumpy? Do the right thing, even if it’s unpopular, and speak up against discrimination where you see it and dispel prejudice where you can, including your own. Donate some of your time to an animal shelter. Do whatever makes you and the people around you happiest without having to throw somebody under the bus for it. Tell your lover what they mean to you. Find a cure for AIDS. Paint a picture. Hug your grandmother.
In the end, when you and me will be rotting cadavers in the ground, all that will still count is how much joy and dignity we have brought those we’ve met throughout our short lives, and how much beauty we’ve left behind.
How much significance have you given your life today?
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