Sieze the day

I recently found myself at a railway station and as I was sitting by the tracks waiting for my train to arrive, I couldn't stop thinking about how everyone in the station would within a century or so be... dead. Which in itself isn't particularly worrisome for me, I think about that a lot when I'm in a room full of strangers, like look at all of these people gathered together at Gate A-4 by a shared desire to go to Lavasa on an early Sunday afternoon. I think of how one day soon this moment will seem distant and we'll find it odd that in 2019 people worried about X or believed Y or wore clothing item Z and this present moment, to me, will feel fixed and distant like an old picture does. Like history. And eventually, this fleeting moment will be entirely forgotten because all of the people who shared it will be gone and isn't it kind of absurd how temporary we all are despite all our efforts to feel permanent? The pictures we save, the emails we archive, the journals we fill in with a lifetime guarantee... as if a lifetime is a long time.
                            
 (All of which I would argue is totally normal stuff to think about when you're stranded alone at a railway station and the Wi-Fi is painstakingly slow)

But then, I started to think some more and I started to feel REALLY nihilistic and angry and kind of disgusted by everything like in a century we'll all be dead including the cute guy sitting three seats away from me... and I shudder by the thought of the meaninglessness of it all and how blithely all these people are walking around pretending that human effort matters when our species itself will be entirely GONE in a geologic nanosecond

 I think of how we will be nothing but an odd brief blip on the radar of this planet's story which itself is an odd brief blip in the larger cosmic story and nothing truly matters and people who believe otherwise are mindless idiots. 
It is astonishing to me how quickly my mind can journey from "I bet people of the future would think our clothes looked weird" to "All effort is meaningless, nothing truly matters and we're all slowly descending to our deaths." Like I'm never more than a couple minutes away from abject nihilistic despair... but then some days I also get these flashes of brilliant optimistic clarity where for a second I stop and I think, "Wait, this is it, this is my life and the challenges exist but it's still beautiful so I better slow down and enjoy it because one day we're all going to end up in the ground and that'll be it, we'll be gone" (Brains are so weird??) 

Nevertheless, I think both these worldviews- are correct like human life is ineffably incredible- every second a  gift, but also we will soon be perpetually extinct and much of what we cared about will be rendered irrelevant by the inrushing tides of time. The question for us is not so much which of these ways of looking at the world is correct, the question is which of these ways of looking at the world is: Productive. And if feelings of despair actually helped me do my homework, I'd be all for it but mostly it just kind of renders me empty. I work when I feel hope. When I'm able- as F. Scott Fitzgerald, once put it 

"to hold in balance the sense of the futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle"

Ultimately, I believe that effort is never futile so long as there are people to share in that effort and people who might benefit from it. Then it makes the struggle worthwhile... necessary, even. And while yes, in the grand scheme of things maybe nothing will matter but, lucky for us, we aren't living in the grand scheme of things! (Yay!!!)

John Keating, Dead Poet's Society (1989)

We live here. In the day to day, At Gate A-4 on an early Sunday afternoon. And we struggle on together not because we're doomed to die and all hope is meaningless but because yes, we're all doomed to die and we owe it to ourselves to make the most of it. Most of even the least of what we have. We struggle on together not because humans are great and eternal but because we're weak and vulnerable. We need each other. We struggle on in the hopes of the lives to come but... most importantly, in the hopes of the spectacular lives we're sharing now. So you know what they say, Carpe Diem.

 Seize the day for me, will you?