THE DAMN TRUTH

Ready? It’s the truth nobody wants to tell you, because if they tell you they would be telling themselves as well and that they don’t want to do. Here it is: life has no meaning, no higher purpose. You’re born, you live, you die. That’s it. You’re not here for any particular reason…a sperm fertilized an egg and you came into being. Had the sperm swum the other way, you wouldn’t be here. That’s the whole cold fact of why you’re here.

And the process is simple: from the moment of birth, your body begins to age, to decay, to rot, and then you die. You were here, then you’re not here. That’s the big deal. You had children? Had your sperm kept swimming, there would be no children. Had your sperm entered someone else’s egg, there would be different children. Built a bridge? Someone else could have built it. Taught a class? Someone else could have taught it. Painted a great painting? You won’t be around to enjoy it. Enjoy listening to music? Soon there will be no music.

Here’s more truth. A little microscopic bug enters your body…and you’re gone. A bolt of lightning from the sky? You’re done. Forgot to turn off the gas stove? Goodbye. Death is an instant away. Rage lurks beneath our manufactured exteriors. So we dull our brain to avoid knowing what we know. We drink, we indulge in mind- altering drugs, we engage in orgies, we swallow anti-depressants. But the truth is immune to our feeble antidotes. It remains ever potent.

And these simple cold truths are hard to take. We want a larger meaning, significance to our lives. Something to make our lives worthwhile beyond the mere living of it. So we set up structures, artificial structures to give our lives an illusion of importance. We create families and we are each a member of a family. Of a race, of a nation, of a religion. We need to belong. The group is larger than we are individually, it must be more important than we are, we think. We create a God who has a plan for us. We are doing His work here on Earth, we say, to give our lives cosmic purpose.

But all the other members of all the groups are but as we are, others who are born, who live and who are dead for eternity. No more, no less. Society sets up conventions, formalities, holidays and celebrations, all designed to give form and substance to our lives. But they are transient and transparent.

Or, life is precious and wondrous beyond words, everything grand and noble we make it out to be.

One view is the damn truth of it all.

But which one?