Meaning

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Not for lack of motivation, but from lack of anything of particular interest to discuss. I’ve been hard at work on a number of projects, big and small, and haven’t had time to consider much else. Still, I’ve had something on my mind that I wanted to discuss in some small detail.

I read somewhere that Nihilism is devoid of hope. That believing in nothing is equal to giving in to despair. While I can see how an outsider would assume such — most of my contemporaries (and, admittedly, yours truly) don’t do much to dissuade this notion — I can only disagree. The purpose of Nihilism isn’t the rejection of positivity, it’s a confrontation of the biggest lie of life: that there’s somehow salvation from it. A normal person, upon seeing one path leading to safety and another to destruction would say that the prior is the obvious choice. A nihilist would regard them simply as both leading to the same place, only at varying lengths. He might prefer one over the other, but would not weigh one as objectively correct.

Sometimes bad things happen in spite of our best efforts, and it’s not always a sign of wisdom to avoid dangerous paths. Our world is chaotic and often unpredictable and it’s not avoidance, but confrontation of difficulty — enduring of hardship and pain that can lend one strength. A path that, at first glance, seems to lead one to their doom, may, in the end, lead to a preferable outcome. A person only knows which is most correct after having travelled their course to its conclusion, following its twists and turns and seeing the results. At that point, obviously, the choosing is irrelevant.

While a nihilist may not regard the totality of a life as having any great significance in the grand scheme, they are still human and possesses thoughts and feelings as one might expect. They may still desire to continue living and see others do the same in peaceful contentedness. They may also be selfless, giving, and creative for no other reason than to make someone happy for even just a few moments. It’s impossible to entirely divest oneself from the human experience because, by our very nature, we are designed to give a shit. A nihilist is, therefore, better described as one who finds their own purpose while at the same time acknowledging it as ultimately meaningless. It’s the understanding that all things come to an end and finding it in oneself to let go of the ephemeral.

Hope, in my case, comes not from the idea that there is meaning in what we do. All things come to an end. The great monoliths of our generation will fall and no fame or notoriety will outlast the tests of time. Even humanity as it exists today will one day disappear, leaving behind only fossilized remains for the next inheritors of our planet to discover. But today I am alive. We are alive. There is hope in the present. Hope for joy and the love of one another. A life doesn’t have to have meaning for it to be meaningful. A life only needs to be lived for it to be so.