Nothing matters.

NOTHING MATTERS.

If you were to build a sand castle, again and again and again, only to have it wash away every time, sometimes before you were even finished, would you still be angry when a tower falls over while you’rebuilding it, or when a dog runs over it, or a child falls on it? It has an extremely short lifespan, and when it’s gone only the memory remains, but when you’ve built thousands of thousands of sandcastles, and they’ve all been washed away, it’s impossible to believe that you would remember them all. So, again,they have extremely short lifespans. Would you still be angry when the construction of it doesn’t so as well as it could?

The overarching answer I expect people to have to this would be “no” because “it doesn’t matter.” And I think that’s correct- the troubles met during the construction of something so temporary are nothing. If it were possible for something to be less than nothing it would be that, since the things those troubles hinder also end up meaning nothing, so the troubles are just smaller nothings to slightly bigger nothings. To worry about or feel angry towards a dog who while chasing a Frisbee has trampled your sandcastle only 1 hour before high tide, leaving you with no time to rebuild it to it’s former glory… is just pointless. The tide will wash away every castle you build, no matter how proud or ashamed of it you are, the water accepts all sand.

The sandcastles don’t matter. Your sandcastle, their sand castles, the tide, the not-so-random random happenings of expected unexpected things… None of them matter but they all keep happening.

…

Maybe reincarnation doesn’t happen like we think, or even at all, but let’s entertain the idea that our life is the castle, and our soul is the builder. When I say “soul” I don’t mean your conscious self, I don’t mean the speaker behind the voice of your internal monologue. What I mean by “soul” is the space your existence occupies. Not the physical space your body claims,but simply the “yes” in the answer to the yes/no question asking “do you exist?” The castles exist, and by their design and form we know that there must be castle builders. We are the castles, we are the evidence of our souls, the builders.

It’s been said that immortality is best sought through your lineage, propagating the idea that you are your ancestors, and that the greatest of your great grandchildren are you. While your conscious self will die, your body lives on in the passing of DNA. This is definitely one type of immortality, but I do not know how to specify it, so I will refer to it as Immortality B, and reserve Immortality A for the more popular immortality,which is your physical body and conscious self living in tandem forever with the passage of time. I would like to propose a third Immortality, Immortality C, which in comparison to the other two is walking backwards, marching in the direction which “immortality” is trying to get away from. Immortality C allows for someone to seek shelter from the ever present anxiety that is existential dread in letting them take solace in knowing that they are the product of something that time cannot touch. They will die but when they do their soul will remain,and having been created once, the person they were could be made again, however unlikely it may be.

A builder who has all of infinity to build castles will have all of infinity to learn from their mistakes, all of infinity to happen upon lucky breaks, and all of infinity to find what works best, to use that technique again, and to strive towards keeping the best aspects each castle in every castle constructed after. A person experiencing existential dread should feel some amount of relief in considering that the best parts of their being could be the best that their soul has ever created. And like the builder, their soul will reuse the template for those best parts in the next.

However, builders will find better techniques to replace old ones which had replaced older ones before, and such is progress. This does not tear down the idea of Immortality, as every Immortality deals with this same problem. Immortality A will have a person live for so long that the universe they inhabit will have changed to such a degree that it is no longer the universe they began in, effectively removing them from existence within the universe they began their immortality in. Immortality B will eventually lead to the death of humanity, which will effectively be the end of your own immortality.Immortality C will eventually lead to the best reused parts of your Being inspiring better parts which will be reused in place of those you left behind as your legacy.

Still, there is one key difference between Immortality C and, A and B. That difference is that with Immortality C you have a say- you are rewarded with as much effort as you contribute. Immortality C says that if you want the best shot at true immortality then you need only be the best that you can be in this life. When faced with obstacles that would defeat others,rise up and overcome. When faced with hard truths, accept them. Take every chance you are presented with which allows you to be the best version of yourself that you can be, even if met with the distaste of others. Their disgust is temporary, their disagreement means nothing, and no one will remember how differently they felt once they’re dead. Your dedication to being the best at what you’re best at will be immortal.

The surest way to fall into non-existence is to sacrifice your potential for the sake of mild success in all facets of a temporary life. The surest way to let that happen is to think that everything matters. The second surest way to let that happen is to believe that nothing matters.