the meaning of life

My writer friend spends his days searching for meaning.

I appreciate his musings.  They lead nowhere in the practical sense, of course.  But they remind me of a bigger, greater world out there, the inspired madness of it all. 

He makes me almost believe there are indeed noble ways to waste time, that working to understand our “greater purpose” is a noble waste of time. 

Sadly, he can't change the truth.

We live for the most basic and selfish of reasons – to exist.  Nothing more. 
Everything we do outside of eating, drinking, staying warm (or cool), fucking and squirting out babies – all our intellectual pursuits - are to either help us accomplish those basic tasks better, or to distract our tumorously over-active frontal lobes from interfering with our main function - to procreate, to sustain the species. 

Nothing more.

Luckily, along the way, we glimpse so many other, different from us, creatures in the same pursuit!  And there’s grace and beauty in it, and that’s my respite from the pointlessness.  It’s trivial to say “the sky, trees, sun, water, birds, animals are pretty” but they are.  And they are different everyday, so you get to greet a brand new world every morning.  And every extra day that you survive to succeed or fail in continuing your species’ selfish procreation game, you get rewarded with the most magnificent backdrops. 

There is no deeper meaning - just heartbreaking beauty everywhere you look.

Image by Cateyano Arroyo