Nihilism

I was deeply disturbed by the avoidable suffering around me during covid, and one thing lead to another and had identity crisis when politics didn’t work out. I spent three months in an ashram in Kerala away from everything, and nihilism was one of the core concepts they helped me internalise!

Life became so much lighter and easier, when I internalised the fact that I am insignificant, absolutely insignificant in the vastness of this universe!

I have these two posters that constantly remind me about the insignificance of life, and how foolish it is to worry over petty things!

Time

Compressing the time from big bang to now into 24 hours!

I am insignificant w.r.t time. In another 200 years, there will not even be a single living soul who would have heard me or seen me! Legacy is a social construct, it’s good for society and bad for an individual!

Space

I am insignificant w.r.t space. If earth itself is a speck of dust, then what am I.

> Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.
> On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,
> every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
> Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some
> privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
> Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
> In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come
> from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot