I often spend the whole day (with breaks for breakfast, lunch and dinner) wrestling with the meaning of life. Inertia sets in, I crawl under the duvet and lie on my side waiting for an answer. When it doesn’t come, I have a bath or go for a walk. During these walks, I think about evolution and the future of the species. I imagine our immortal robotic successors sneering at our petty lives. Then I smile at the thought of the death of the universe and how even the robots will eventually be snuffed out. It doesn’t matter how many billions of years away such an eventuality is - the end exists as a permanent reminder of finitude.
‘Ah!’, you might say, ‘we may not even get to the point of making the robots - we could be extinguished or at the very least severely humbled long before that. Possibly even this century.’ We could be selling sex for rats (a la Threads) in the next ten years. Imagine if these were the glory days of the race!
You might argue that I have lost my sense of perspective - that ultimate meaning is a waste of breath, that I should live in the moment (or at least the next hundred years). Perhaps even the next 10,000 years would be somewhat more manageable. But I insist on the full 13 billion.
Under the covers stray thoughts occur . . . maybe I’m just tired and irritable. I was chiding the ghost of Angus Fairhurst only last week and now look at me, ready to do myself away. Oh, and didn’t I solve the meaning of life years ago. Ah yes, I discovered that meaning was a projection from the subject, not an object to be pursued. But that which satisfied then, satisfies no one now.
I get out of bed, procrastinate on the internet watching Simon Munnery on Youtube and read about Samuel Beckett, and then suddenly have an epiphany: I’m wasting my life - I ought to do something - anything - rather than sit here. By constantly thinking about meaning, life is drained of meaning. What a terrible curse for the sensitive and thoughtful gentleman this is! And so I resolve to write a daily diary. Every day. Online.
This is it.
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