On a long enough timeline, everything we stress about rounds down to zero.
Not metaphorically, literally. The universe is ~13.8 billion years old and expanding endlessly. Galaxies drift out of reach. Stars burn out. Eventually, even matter itself may stop existing in any meaningful way.
Most of what structures our lives (jobs, career paths, social norms) are collectively agreed constructs. Temporary systems we've all decided to take very seriously.
So if you zoom out far enough you realise we're on a rock orbiting an average star, in one galaxy among hundreds of billions, most of which we'll never even be able to observe. When you look at it that way, the "rational" approach starts to look slightly irrational.
Why optimise your ~80 years for productivity and approval, when the backdrop is infinite expansion and eventual heat death?
Cosmically speaking, it would make just as much sense (if not more) to behave a bit like a mad person. Follow curiosity. Ignore arbitrary timelines. Care less about what you're "meant" to be doing.
And yet, I don't.
If anything, I conform more than most. I think about career progression, positioning, output. This very blog exists on a personal site that, at least in part, is designed to make me look better professionally. Even this thought, questioning the system, is being neatly packaged into something "useful".
Which is kind of the point.
It's hard to step outside of a system you benefit from, or at least feel you have to play. The incentives are too baked in. So instead, you end up with this strange middle ground, aware it's all a bit arbitrary, but still participating anyway.
Maybe that's the most honest position.
Not rejecting it all. Not pretending it matters more than it does. Just holding both ideas at once...
That none of this really matters on a cosmic scale (even the light being emitted today has a limit on how far it can ever travel. There are parts of the universe that are, in a very real sense, already gone to us).
But you'll still send the email, hit the deadline, and publish the blog.
This blog explores why, despite the cosmic insignificance of human life and the arbitrary nature of our social systems, we continue to participate in them anyway. It argues that the most honest position is to hold both ideas at once — fully aware of the absurdity, still hitting the deadline.