Sometimes I get to the end of a day and feel like I've really accomplished things. Then I remember that Elijah Wood was Frodo when he was 18 years old and I sort of give up.
Not actually, but perspective is important. Take today, for example. I called my eye doctor, Skyped with my best friend who has been out of the country and therefore out of contact for a couple of weeks, reserved a U-Haul truck for moving day, and currently have brownies in the oven for my dad's work picnic tomorrow. Those are all things that needed to be done for MY life to go more smoothly, even if they don't affect more than one or two people around me. So does that make them important?
Sometimes I make myself dizzy trying to figure out whether I and the things I do are important in a big picture kind of way. By getting things done that seem important to me, I keep my life running and make one less crazy person in the world. So that's important.
Cosmically, nothing we do matters. We have no current contact with life outside of Earth's atmosphere. And very few people's actions have global repercussions. So what defines a person as "important?" For clarification, I'm not an existentialist. Not really. I mean, in a really big-picture way, we don't matter. But in smaller big pictures, we do. If an action of mine has an effect on anyone other than myself, it immediately takes on more importance. There's this weird web of importance where the people who matter to me don't matter at all to anyone else, and some people who matter to me matter to another person, and people important to a guy somewhere else don't mean shit to me. Then people like John and Hank come along and say, "Yeah, you DO matter. And you're awesome."
This is in no way where I meant for this post to go. I'm glad only two people read this, because if it were public everyone would completely lost faith in my sanity. I appreciate that you forgive my psychotic rambling >.<
Up, down, strange charm, top, bottom / If you don't know what a quark is, it don't matter--you still got 'em. -Strange Charm, Hank Green
I don't think this was psychotic rambling. The "smaller big picture," as you put it so well, is the reason, while I actually think Existential nihilism is a very valid philosophy, that I find meaning and value in life. My life matters to me and there are other people that really matter to me, so I can ignore that universe at large doesn't give a fuck about me, because in my own small universe people do matter.
ReplyDelete^Seconded.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the fact that you make people matter in your own life makes your own life matter. Not in an 'I'd be nothing without you' way, but more like 'I'd be less of me than I am today without you'. If that makes sense. People make each other matter simply by incorporating others into their respective lives. And I'd like to say I am incredibly honored to be one of the two people who are awesome enough to read your blog ;) (Fun fact: 'honored' showed up with the red squiggly line and demanded to be spelled with a 'u'; it seems my computer is British.)
Well it had to be at least SOMEWHAT foreign with a name like "Pasquale." And "honored" may be the wrong word to use since, when I mentioned that I had a blog, you demanded the link and would not be dissuaded ;)
ReplyDeleteTrue. Also, Pascual. But the fact that you deigned to mention it in my company and didn't try to fob me off makes me feel special :)
ReplyDelete