Discovery
Discovering your “self” is widely regarded as the fundamental goal of life. I agree with this, and I think that there is nothing even close to as important. I do however disagree with the commonly used definition of ones “self”. Usually this means finding what you like and doing that, or learning more about the things that make you happy. However you choose to define it, I’m guessing it revolves around this body and mind that you call “I” on a daily basis.
This is the idea that I would like to challenge. Things don’t just come into existence, and this universe is far older than any one of us. This means that before you were born, “you” still existed. Most recently, in the form of your parents. Go back a bit further, and you may have been in one of the very first living organisms on this planet. The deeper you look, the more interesting your existence becomes. At some point, for the building blocks of your body to become what they are today, they had to undergo some change. This change occurs only in the center of stars, scattered across space, where temperatures reach millions and millions of degrees. But how did these stars come to form? We think that every single packet of energy was contained in a region of space called a singularity. Everything you have ever seen, heard of, or imagined, existing at a point infinitely smaller than the dot of an “i” on a page. This is “you”, or “i”, or “us”. Everything, dead or alive, near or far, from the past or in the future, is in fact “you”.
So discovering yourself is the goal of life, but never forget who “you” are. Use your time here to discover things that nobody has ever discovered about this universe. As Carl Sagan said “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”. We think there may be life elsewhere in this vast universe, but truly we don’t know. You’re an eye through which the universe gets to see. Imagine there is no conscious life anywhere else in the universe, do you really want to risk missing the chance to learn about your history and future? Life is short, over in just a blink, so learn everything you can about the way this place works. Any piece of knowledge you bring into existence is just another piece of the puzzle contributing towards the collective discovery of “us”.
