None of it really matters....NONE

Does any of it really matter?  Life is a span of years full of experiences, quantified subjectively.  This is your identity.  You might have a belief or faith that will extend your life into a different dimension once your body ceases to function.  The idea is sound and full of promise, there is no contest.  Some of those experiences are from your own life and some are the experiences through stories of others.  These stories will give way to the promise of eternal life, an existence beyond that of the senses, an existence that extends beyond the material world.   This however is not about that life, the one beyond the material world.  This is about this life, the one that is based in the here and now, what was and what will be.  The life that exists because you think it exists and therefore it does. 

            There is a quest for purpose in existence.  Those that have yet to find a purpose rely on feelings of malcontent to drive them into a purpose.  There are a limited amount of purposes.  In total there is marriage, children, family, job, love, sex, money, items or things, religion, journey or quest, answers, conflict, destruction, growth, life and death.  When a purpose is found there is a sense of satisfaction.  There is a feeling of meaning to life.  However, with or without purpose, life is meaningless.  Finding meaning in life is as arbitrary as finding meaning in death. 

            Some already understand this, yet the reason for their understanding is misguided.  The assumption that God has the answers and meanings for existence is the misguided conclusion.  God will show you the way or God works in mysterious ways is another way of saying that we have no idea what the meaning is.  We have no grasp of the meaning or reason behind the experiences in life.   Putting meaning on something meaningless is false.

            Life is a list of experiences and those experiences and paths are either chosen or predetermined.  It doesn’t really matter which, be that the path is a path and nothing more.  The path of life fill with experiences, either subjectively good or bad, and then the paths come to an end. 

            There are an immeasurable number of paths, each as unique as the person taking, will take, and have taken in all of history, past, present and future.  Some of those paths where recorded and preserved up to the present time as a lesson or guide as to what path is most sound.  For the vast majority the path is quantified in a number.  For example, the hundreds of thousands that died of the plague prior to vaccination, the millions that died prior to genocide and human rights laws passed by the United Nations and the countless others that just died at some point along their path.  Those unmarked graves, forever compost under a skyscraper or urban shopping center. 

            There have been many remarkable paths taken by individuals that have lead us toward longer living, less pain and fewer crimes against humanity.  For the most part the path is considered an upward climb toward fame, fortune, an idea of power and notoriety.  But one thing still remains the same; the path ends for everyone at some point.

            Some of these previous paths have had an impact.  Paths blazed to inspire and notable enough to have followers. However the followers of those paths followed along a path already taken, making the path nothing more than one less in the countless possibility. 

            Everything that exists will cease to exist.  Everything that will come into existence will eventually also ceases to exist.   

            The big picture is bigger than our imaginations can comprehend.  There is no limit to the picture.  It spans out into a time yet to come, so distant that only scientific assumptions can be made regarding the time when the sun will swallow the earth.   It will be at this point that all that existed along with all that will exist will come to its final end.  There will no longer be an existence that is quantifiable within our human limitations.  Minerals and elements will continue to form and collapse, but consciousness will cease and no more paths will be blazed, or followed.

            So what is it that keeps us going and not drive us into an collective jump off the figurative bridge?  Ignorance, or ignoring, the one fact that is so unwavering that it can never be denied.  The path will come to an end.  Maybe today, tomorrow, a year or 50 years from now the path will end.  In time there will be no record, no reason for your existence what so ever.  This is only a depressing thought and lacking in optimism using judgment and ignoring the truth. 

            Countless organisms have come and gone with more to follow.  We are all in the middle, beginning or the end, relatively speaking, of the coming and going of organisms that have, are and will exist. 

            There may be a time when existence reaches some pinnacle of enlightenment.  In order for this to occur, all of the countless paths must come to one point.  This may occur and the effects could be incredibly dramatic, but in order for that to happen the idea of reality needs to turn upside down.  All that is assumed about individuality needs to be reversed.  Most importantly, there will not be one person at the root of this.  There begins the first step in turning reality upside down, to cease with the idea of individuality.  One path will not lead the way for others to follow.  With all of recorded and assumed existence there has never been a path followed by so many to alter the path of existence.  There have been some trailblazers as mentioned before that has acquired quite a following.  Some helpful, so disastrous, but all those paths constitute a following, not a convergence

            This occurrence, if ever even possible, will not happen within a quantifiable amount of time.  Though we are all genetically similar, there are too many differences.  Let alone our inability for pure communication, the diversities are vast.  From our paths being so diverse, to our belief, understandings of existence, faith and simple proximity to one another all of which constitute roadblocks toward this pinnacle of existence.

            I was born and will die.  I have had and will continue to have experiences separate from anyone else.  I will be forgotten. 

            Before my mother was born, my grandmother, who is now suffering from dementia, was married to a man that died in World War II.  At the same time her first husband died in that war, her only son also died.  No one alive today, included my confused grandmother, remembers anything of that boy.  That boy traveled a very short path before its end.  That boy was born and died and is forgotten.  Nothing about that boy, me or you is exceptional.   The only difference being the length and therefore a quantifiable amount of experiences.  
            My experiences have included love, pain, joy and sorrow, but these events are simple addition to the experiences of other quantifiable list of experiences that have no value outside of me.  If that man didn't die and my grandmother didn't meet my grandfather and gave birth to my mother and if she hadn't overcome her near drowning experience induced by her cousin, I might never have been able to walk my own path.  If this did happen, all of existence would be the same.  My birth, most likely, did not impact Mark Zuckerburg’s creation of Facebook.

            Beliefs of what constitutes reality have changed and will continue to change as drastically as from the past to the present.  It was acceptable for a doctor to smoke while examining a patient a few years ago, now it considered absurd.  Wearing a bikini was against the law a few years back, now it’s legal for a woman to be topless in the state of New York.  It was also acceptable to buy and sell human beings, while that hasn't changed at least there is a law against it now. 

            Change will always happen, not necessarily for the better, but it will happen all the same.    

            My father has had a long life, relatively speaking, and he will die.  He is not sick, just old according to surveys of life expectancy.  He might be able to see my 5 year old daughter graduate high school, but that would be about as far as his path will lead.  He is constantly living in fear.  He is worried about money, though he owns over a million in real estate across the eastern seaboard.  He hasn't come to terms with the fact that his life, his path, is merely full of experiences that will soon come to an end.  There must be something more, he wonders.  He is a solitary man, yet social and charismatic and loved by all of his vast family and friends.  Yet he is miserable.  He fathered two sons; both accepted within society’s standards, he has a loving and patient wife yet has a feeling of impending doom.  He has not accepted the fact that his path will end and eventually he will be forgotten.  No one can escape death.  By trying to ignore and escape the inevitable he is burdened with sadness.

            Eventually, there might come a time when all of existence is on the same path.  Chosen or predetermined to be on that path.  With that will come an inexplicable union of consciousness.  Until then, or if then will ever be a reality, we will all walk a path, full of independent experiences that will lead no where.  There should be no judgment of the fact.