I delayed starting my blog, I often left thoughts unexplored and unwritten because I felt like there couldn’t possibly be anything that I could say that others couldn’t say better.

I doubt myself all the time, at least a couple of times every day. I wonder what’s the point of doing anything. I wonder what my life is ever going to amount to. I think about the grand systems going on, and I think about all the great writers and thinkers that emerge from it, and wonder what I could possibly do that would make a difference. I doubt that I can accomplish what I set out to do, I doubt pretty much anything and everything. It all seems so improbable and unlikely.

So why do anything, then? That’s actually a loaded question- because it implies that not-doing things is actually an option. I used to think I chose that path. I didn’t really want to do anything. But, as it turns out, that option doesn’t actually exist- it’s just an illusion. We’re always doing something, whether we realize it or not. Claiming to elude definition is just another simplistic way of defining yourself. Saying you don’t care about fashion is a fashion statement. Denying office politics is just another way to play the game. As long as you’re alive (and sometimes, even after you’re dead), you’re always doing something.

So the question “why”, while interesting, doesn’t really change very much. (Unless we find out a clear answer, of course- but it’s pretty clear that we’re not going to find a clear answer anytime soon.) It’s like asking why gravity or electromagnetism exists- or why anything exists at all! We don’t actually know, and I’m not sure if we ever will. I’m willing to bet that we never will. I like the idea that existence arose within nothing, rather than out of nothing. Though that’s a story for another day.

The point is- the better question is “what should we do?” We may not know why it rains, but we know what we ought to do when it does. We may not know why we feel certain emotions and impulses, but it’s important to know how to deal with them. So let’s start with the assumption that doing things is something we can reasonably take for granted- that it’s a truism, an axiom of human nature. To be human is to do stuff, even if it means sitting on one’s ass, asking why we do stuff. So if we’re going to be doing stuff no matter what- what should we do?

Life is huge, vast, endlessly complex. So it’s a bit hard to start by trying to embrace all of life at one go. So perhaps it might be a good idea to work with simplified analogies instead.

Suppose you wake up and find yourself locked in an empty room, with nothing but a television set and a video game console. Would you turn on the TV? Why? What’s the point? Well- why not? There’s nothing else to do, is there? You don’t know if the TV’s going to work, or if the game’s going to be fun- but there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

Suppose you wake up and find yourself in Disneyland instead. It’s a few hours to closing time. No, let’s up the ante- you will cease to exist altogether in a few hours. What do you do? You take the bloody rides, that’s what! Some people will spend their hours trying to figure out what rides they ought to take, or moping and complaining about how short those few hours are, or how annoying the other people are.

Life is Disneyland. Or a game of poker. Or World of Warcraft. But endlessly, infinitely more complex and interesting. The rules are a lot more flexible, you have a lot more creative freedom. You get to build your own rides, craft your own experiences. You are the architect, the engineer and the participant of your own experience. True, external circumstances and stimuli do matter, and influence the You that is the final arbiter- but you do have some  degree of autonomy, and that makes all the difference.

So if you would have turned on that TV, if you would have gotten on those rides, if you would have played those hands of poker at the table- then you would also go forth and live your life. So do it! There is nothing more important.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.” -Richard Dawkins

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” -Stanley Kubrick