Brrrr!

Nothing matters. The stark substance of that brutal truth makes the already terrible task of existence even harder to endure. How is one to contend with the thousand little indignities, the tiny tragedies we cope with each and every day, if in the end it all counts for nothing? We assign meaning to random events and value to objects of no intrinsic worth, but only to keep ourselves from confronting the reality that we are pushed about by forces we cannot comprehend and motives that are mysteries even as we pretend we have agency over them. “I just want people to understand me, to know why I did what I did,” we think when we confront the possibility of our expiry, but there is no explanation that can convey why we made the choices we did when we do not even fully know ourselves. We careen between altruism and avarice and all the possible permutations within and while some of us are more good and some of us are more bad in the end it makes no difference because we every one of us end up in the ground and the ground accepts all without judgment. We should, in fact, take comfort in the idea that no matter how badly we’ve fucked things up for ourselves and others in the end it doesn’t make a difference, but that’s difficult to deal with while simultaneously still doing the damage we do each day and trying to propel ourselves forth to the future even when we know how badly it’s going to turn out. The grave is all we can realistically look forward to. And tomorrow will be even colder.