I am a thoughtful person and spend a lot of time thinking. I would like to share some of my recent thoughts. Please join in this debate by commenting on this post.
The ingredients of everything
From what I understand everything in the world is made of atoms, which can neither be created nor destroyed. That means that everything in the world is made of the same atoms but they change into different things - like using some bricks to build something, then taking it apart, then using the same bricks to build something else. So what is one day a rock can next day be a plant and so on.
Recycling of the same ingredients
My reasoning calculates that this means that one day there is a person, then the person dies and the atoms become other things. I personally would prefer them to be a person because every person is my sibling (we were all born from those very first people many thousands of years ago). But the universe does not care. It makes no difference to it how the atoms are arranged.
What is our goal?
My reasoning also calculates that there is no "end game" or special prize in life. By this I mean something meaningful to work towards. We just happened to be alive but are still made of those same atoms. So what if we crack the code of life? So what if we become able to create anything we want? Maybe our hormones will make us feel happy, but feelings aside and looking at it logically - what have we gained? I am trying to imagine the life of a robot. It does not have feelings and just completes tasks. What life is this? What is the purpose, really? The robot will gain nothing. If the robot is destroyed then it's existence (to it personally, not to the humans that it helped) will have no meaning. I use the robot as an example of a completely clear headed person who has no emotions and works using logic alone.
Death
I see death as simply being completely unconscious. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing... If the person still "sees" something (like a light, figures etc.) then clearly for that moment they are still alive, or at least part of the brain is still functioning. Death is when the brain shuts down, not when the heart stops. If I have a night where I don't dream at all there is no space between falling asleep and waking up. I feel as though I just went to bed and suddenly it is morning. I don't feel like any time has passed. Only in those nights where I dream do I feel like I was alive for that space between falling asleep and waking up. So if I had died at that moment on that night with no dreams, I wouldn't even have known. That is probably how any death is. The person suffers but then goes into darkness, and all the suffering ends. As I understand that death is the end, I have no heavenly prospects in mind.
Was it all worthwhile?
So what were all those worries? What was all that suffering? It only existed while I remembered it. Some people will be sad that I left. But I wouldn't even know that I had lived. This is depressing on one hand but liberating on the other. It reinforces my point that pain shouldn't cause suffering. It won't after death, so why should it now? It is all one and the same anyway.
My conclusion
Someone might think that this means that living in the first place was pointless. That is true. But very often in life it happens that 2 opposing opinions are both correct. Using the same logic we could conclude that living is a worthwhile thing. There was a time before life appeared. We (living things) are something completely new and unprecedented. Before us everything was boring. Life should be fun, and fun only. If we know that afterwards there will be nothing we can value this time as something special. I will try to set aside the suffering, as I have been for some time now since starting this blog, and concentrate on squeezing the maximum I can from this life.
