Written on 2022-10-23

I had my existential crisis when reading Dawkins’ “Selfish Gene” back in 2016, as I realized that altruism is an evolved trait designed to get more out of others for my own genes’ benefit. I’d previously conceptualized helping others as an objective Good, and the foundation of my life - formed on Christian values - crumbled in the course of a few days. I was deeply shaken, and my head was in a strange place for about a month: nothing mattered; why even live?

The experience culminated in a hotel room in the Westin in Abu Dhabi. I climbed up to the ledge of my balcony with a strange “Am I really going to do this?” thrill, and looked down at the pavement far below. It was a sunny day, and I sat for a long time under that cloudless blue sky. Children were playing on the grass nearby, and I was troubled by how my imminent splattering might traumatize their lives. It was meaningless, I knew - those children objectively didn’t matter, their lives didn’t matter, and what I did to them didn’t matter. And yet, it did matter subjectively to me. I came down off the ledge and stepped back inside.

In the long shower afterwards I decided that if nothing mattered, it didn’t matter if I lived or died. If it didn’t matter, then I could arbitrarily choose to live for no other reason than because I wanted to. Therefore, I chose to live. This conviction to live has settled to the bottom of my soul over the years. There’s no deep reasoning or meaning behind it - I simply made an arbitrary choice, and I moved on with my life.

Trouble is, beyond the conviction that “I want to live just because”, I find it very difficult to maintain the “nothing matters so I am free to do as I please” frame for very long. Meetings and deadlines, running late, rejections and disappointments, disagreements with friends, grocery shopping, planning travel, accidental credit card charges, spam calls, email, weekend bar visits… they all drag me back into a world of business busyness that whispers, “I am important; these things matter”. Meditation and psychedelics and trips into nature can pull me out of the weeds temporarily, but I never seem to fully ascend.

It seems to me that we’ve stitched a veil of meaning, formed of our subjective beliefs in morality, to shroud the uncaring nature of the universe. We accept that if we drive safely and look both ways before we cross the street then cars are safe. We scoff at the “superstitious” nature of karma but we toil our lives away in offices because we believe good things happen to good, industrious people. We believe that the Earth is a central fixture of everything. We import the blue light of day to our devices at night, screening us from the cosmic abyss with its billions of stars, each multiple human lifespans away. We deny that life is fair, but we secretly believe it.

Yet, tragedy tears through that veil. A wife on her daily drive home is crushed in an accident on the highway. A new mother is diagnosed with brain cancer. An athlete is murdered in a nightclub over a bottle of whiskey. A friend overdoses. A baby is strangled by the umbilical cord at birth. These events leave us numb and cold; we seek comfort and order and meaning in their wake. The veil makes sense.

Is there an alternative? I recently watched “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once”, and an analysis of the movie discussed its theme of nihilism vs existentialism. I realized that I didn’t know what existentialism was, and discovered that its message of “it’s true that nothing matters, but we’re therefore free to make our own destiny” was the same one I’d fashioned for myself in the shower of the Westin. I have a suspicion there’s freedom to be had in existentialism, if we’re brave enough to keep the veil off.

But how? In Stoics conceptualization, you should meditate on your own death. I’d tried this before - imagining my own funeral, with mourners and perhaps even my family - but it had never done much for me. Today, however, I happened to visualize my own dying in a car crash - my head caved in, my body convulsing with pain, my vision tunneling and my thoughts slurring as I bled out. Knowing that the ambulance wouldn’t arrive in time. Regretting not having a family.

There are no magic bullets. I still haven’t been able to fuel a change in action from this meditation - I had the same insecurities as I walked around town, and the fears they represented felt no less real. Yet, viscerally experiencing my own death felt somehow useful. I realized that I haven’t fully accepted that I will die, and I’ve been avoiding thinking about the gruesome details. Therapy has taught me how counterproductive avoidance is, and how much can be resolved by simply sitting with discomfort. Could the price of existentialist apotheosis be the regular contemplation of the death of myself and everyone I love?

Time to experiment.