How's Your Day Going?

Do you ever have one of those moments when you’re walking down the street and you’re passing a person on a cellphone who is in deep conversation about some Very Important Deal, oblivious to the rest of the world due to the urgency of his — and it’s generally a he — activities, and you are stunned by a wave of sadness as you contemplate how the miracle of evolution has resulted in our becoming a species afflicted with mammoth self-importance and an almost deliberate denial of the reality that pretty much none of what we do will ever really mean anything, that what waits for us is oblivion and yet we’re somehow so wrapped up in all these Moments and Feelings that we use to validate our sense of self? Even the suffering and sadness of these occasional realizations is ultimately unimportant: we are all in a taxi to the tomb, and the contemplation that irrefutable fact does nothing to blunt its essence. It means nothing. None of it. Still, it’s hard not to be aware of it on a day like today. Good Lord, what is up with all this rain and gloom? But I have good news for you: the weekend looks sunny! I mean, you’re still going to die, but there is at least a brief spot of brightness on the horizon.

Photo by SVLuma, via Shutterstock