Nihilism

Tick. Tock.
Your routine echoes on. You take the days as they come, one by one. It’s easier – easier to lay low, out of the spotlight, in the bunker. You let other people hurl themselves forward, onto the stage, into the battlefield. It’s hard not to make excuses for your lack of success; it’s hard not to compare to others and their success. You let the world spin, day by day, watch as everyone else’s story unfolds, but your own. You wonder whether you’re special, that maybe you’re not like the others, that maybe you will never turn out okay. Though, from time to time you remember and take a step back to look at it all, to really think why. Maybe you’re up a mountain looking down on everything else, maybe you’re on the ground looking up to the skies, however you are, you recall that your everything is someone else’s nothing. That no matter how much you desire to be special, no matter how much you believe you are special, it changes nothing about the sombre war glowing in your thoughts, the psychological grind in the back of your mind.

You recall that life really is this simple. Every day is the same meaningless grind to nothing. Every day is the same futile war to nothing. Every day is the same. That your painfully slow tic of one day to the tock of the next is just the same as anyone else’s tick-tock. You remember that the 2D, flat, plain theory of life is powerful enough to drive anyone’s mind to insanity. You are not special. But, what if you really were special? What if there really was more out there? You browse the possibilities. You dream of other worlds. You desperately hunt for that explanation to everything. I mean, there must be one, right? With an infinite number of worlds hidden behind the cloak of light and veil of time it only seems reasonable. Then again, planet “GJ 1214b” is simply just another dream dreamt by another dreamer just like you. You feel betrayed.

To be told your entire life that everything is important. To be told that you are important. To be told that your education, health, fitness, social life and every measurable trait about you is important. To be manipulated, deluded and deceived and be told that everything has significance only to be enlightened and come to the realisation that your everything is nothing. Everything is nothing. Why is everything so futile? Your education means nothing in the span of the entire universe; your health means nothing in the lifetime of the entire universe; your fitness means nothing in the age of the entire universe; your social life means nothing in the period of the universe; everything in your life, my life and anybody else’s life here, today, yesterday, tomorrow or any other point in time, on this Earth and anywhere in this universe or any other universe there must be, means absolutely nothing. Zero. Everything means nothing.

After all, you are only a single human in an army of billions of others in a group of trillions and trillions of other organisms on a single planet in a universe of trillions and trillions of other planets in an infinite number of other universes there must be in an infinite amount of time from past, present and future. Everything will always and has always meant nothing.

Everyone and everything are so small and incomprehensibly insignificant. Breaking the rules, stretching the boundaries and pushing the limits mean nothing. You mean nothing – you can’t do anything. Your mistake is nothing. Your importance is nothing. Nothing you ever do has significance. Your fucking futility is the most real thing there is. Your time here is infinitely small. A blink of an eye in trillions and trillions of lifetimes. A small weak little flash in a limitless void of darkness.

So surely then you should make the most of your flash of a life?

You try. You want to rewrite your story, but it feels as though the time has gone. Born onto a moving train, the lights of opportunity flashing past the window, one after the other. You can feel the acceleration of the train as you stand up. You have to make your move now. You can’t let the world spin day by day anymore. You need to hurl yourself onto that battlefield now, no more laying low. You need to dance into that spotlight now, no more excuses.

What does it matter if...?
If what? - No excuses now.
You are special. You’re the only one who can change your life.
You’re kidding yourself, you know it won’t last. Those lights will keep slipping by.
No - you promise yourself this time it will be different.

But, soon enough, your routine echoes on and you’re taking the days as they come, yet again.
Tick. Tock.