Be it from a naturalist or spiritual point of view, it’s easy to get the notion that we are really small.
I mean, too damn small. Just look at this:
Feeling down yet ?
Actually, we don’t need to go that far to get a feeling of insignificance. Just look at the your world, your city, your community: each one of us doesn’t matter a lot by default.
In practice, I don’t think that people are obliged to care about it, as most of it is inevitable, or that it justifies some extreme nihilism, because life is still interesting and should keep on going anyways. But it seems that some people like me feel unconfortable with this irrelevance at the smaller scales.
But what can we do ? Strive each and every day to succeed in our small achievements, such tiny bits of influence on an infinitely larger universe, that give us some sign of our own existence and relative importance to the little world around us ?
Pretty much this. Call us crazy if you want. But from here we proceed like it makes sense.
Obviously you can’t succeed (and by “succeed” I mean at least leaving something useful and being recongnized for it) in all possible fronts, so you have to pick one or two, I guess.
For now, I’m trying programming, partly because I really like it and partly because it gives me the feeling of doing much more than what is actually being done, lol.
Mandatory XKCD comic strip:
I mean… sitting in front a computer, writing and running code… and things happen ! Looks like magic, feels powerful.
I know they only happen in a virtual reality, but that’s still a reality, right ?… Ok, maybe not. But it’s still cool for showing off, and that makes me more relevant (talk about futility).
Besides, all this programming thing makes the “bits” on the blog title have a double meaning, which is also cool (as if I have planned it 6~7 years ago).
However, even with all this mental cheating, and counting all the things learned along the coding way, I still get the impression of making no real difference. That’s where the half depressed tone comes from. ` But I like to feel like this if that’s true (as it currently is). I’d rather face reality and its limited oportunities to be a true game changer than fool myself into senseless pride, even if that means keeping the struggle for an unreachable goal until the end.
A little dramatic, I know. But that’s how I am. Life is too short to be taken lightly.
That’s it for the beginning. Thanks for reading. I hope you all achieve something great as well, if you will.