Mortality is Meaning

This is a continuation of my thoughts on the Universe Experiencing Itself.

Death is inevitable, waiting like a patient golden retriever. To live is to die. More importantly, to live is to experience. The precious and unrepeatable passing moments are occasions to celebrate. 

I once thought that the Universe would find its own end one day in heat death: the idea that entropy — where organization dissolves — would plunge everything into stillness. The Universe’s ending is not guaranteed. Some physicists now argue the opposite, that the Universe will become even more organized as it grows indefinitely. This is all the more reason to make the most of our finite time. Mortality, therefore, provides us meaning, which we must take full advantage of before the final curtain drops.

Limit anything and its value seems to increase. Grocery stores do it during sales: limit three per customer. Colleges limit enrollments. The Universe limits our time. Unlike the grocery store, the Universe doesn’t tell us an expiration date. My great-great aunt Vit lived to over 100 years old. A high school classmate died in a car accident the year after graduating. He was 19. Not knowing when this comedy-drama ends is even more reason to “suck the marrow out of life”, as Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden.

My brother and I have a saying, born on a farm in Puerto Rico. We stood outside the greenhouse of our WOOFing hosts, staring across the treetops of the El Yunque rainforest. Carlos had just served us breakfast. I’m not sure if it was Will or I who said, “If it ain’t a helluva day, it ain’t fucking worth it.” But it’s been a constant reminder for the past ten years. I’m revising it as I age, because every day is worth it.

We’re all running out of time. Make meaning.