On Immaturity

It has been quite some time , I guess.

For a good part of my life , I have been searching for a meaning of existence. I guess I started that when I was five years old. I had not then been introduced to the concept of a god , but had been introduced to books on outer space. Back then I had read through those books with utmost curiosity. In one of those books (I guess it was "Space Encyclopaedia" by DK Publications which I read when I was about seven years old) I came upon an artist's impression of the multiverse. The figure showed many multicoloured bubbles of varying sizes, each representing a universe , set against a dark background. To be fair, that image was beautiful. I could put that image as my wallpaper even now and not be bored by it. But it was not just the visual beauty of it that attracted me to it. It was also what it stood for.

Think of it- any one of those bubbles could be everything I knew about and more. Each of them comprised of worlds perhaps like our own, and each one of them would be just as real as any other. I loved that idea for some reason. I was always quite shy, and as a child , I found it hard to talk to people about the things I liked. I find it hard even today. However, what if there were other versions of me around ? I could talk to them without any reservation and marvel at the things that I liked. That was what I thought back then. I used to act like I was in touch with other versions of myself, and I thought that those other versions also did the same, so that when we do finally meet, we could talk as if we were always together.

Such were my fantasies in childhood. They persisted all the way to my college days to some degree, and were particularly strong around the time I was fifteen. I used to write stories about travellers who travelled universes and occasionally exchanged their experiences. I loved that book. I called it the Multiroz. It was taken away from me many times by many different people, but I kept rewriting it. Back then I did not know how to make backups, so I rewrote it differently every time. I still am doing that today , I guess.

While I was in this stage , it never occurred to me why people cared so much about life. Life , or anything else for that matter , looked so insignificant in the cosmos. Everything just seemed to happen, and that was it. Even when I came upon the concept of 'God' , I wondered why anyone would want an extra step to make sense of how nature worked. When I was about eight years old, in fact , I had an argument with one of my teachers about the existence of god. The teacher's entire argument was just 'Who else do you think created all the things in this beautiful world ?'. To me, 'Who' was the wrong question. It was just transferring the responsibility from one god to another. The real question was why anyone was necessary to explain the creation of nature. And even if a 'god' creating nature was supposed to explain it , how do you explain the existence of god ? Now look , I would not have cared the least if god actually existed and the real question was why god existed. I am used to a lot of things in nature, especially in biological systems, where things could have been implemented in a more simple way. But the fact is that there is not even any circumstantial evidence worth mentioning that gives one the impression that there is god (other than perhaps, religious brainwashing).

Incidents like these eventually made me one of those typical atheists who would scorn at people who talked about god/gods. The main reason was how illogical these people were in most cases. I am talking particularly about India's version of faith, which takes stuff to a whole new level. Even if you ignore the barbaric violence and bodily harm that people bring upon themselves in the name of religion , you still get the inconvenience of having to listen to loud crowds and drums late into the night, and getting dragged by relatives into temples where you have to stand in queues for hours or even days at a time in some cases. Yeah. The real reason I hated religion was the inconvenience it had caused me.

So why am I rambling about all this ? Well, now that I look back at al these , I realize I used to be a totally different person. Nowadays I couldn't care less if someone said something that sounded stupid. I have come to accept that all humans are , in general , deceptive , hypocritical , irrational and such for the most part. A lot of humans live religiously with the slogan 'follow your heart' or something else that is about as cringe. I couldn't care less about life. I couldn't care less about the meaning of existence anymore. I used to search for it in the early days of my youth until I looked at something that was staring me in the face all this while.

Human comprehension is insufficient to comprehend nature.

The very concept of "Meaning" is man made. It is very human. But nature is not humane. Why would it even have a concept of meaning ? It is like asking how a rock feels. I do not know if rocks have emotions, but common sense dictates that they shouldn't. Similarly, common sense dictates that nature should not have meaning. Now , should I stick to this so called "common sense" or should I believe otherwise and look for meaning regardless ? The choice is purely personal, and either choice probably doesn't matter. After all , Humans are temporal creatures that are insignificant compared to something like nature. Well, I guess nature itself is quite insignificant.
It just.. exists. And everything in nature goes on continuing their actions. Looking at it from that perspective, I guess it is quite immature to be riled up by things in nature. ..or by humans.

It is quite nice to not have a care in the world. After all , it doesn't really matter. You can choose to care and have all that thrill of falling in love or struggling to get by or being afraid of the next deadline or getting beaten in a ring.. That too is a personal choice which doesn't truly matter. Some unimportant likes and dislikes.
Personally, I find all that quite tiring.
Also , I've also realized something else.

Whichever path you choose ,you wind up asking yourself, "What am I doing…?"

I've seen that trait too many times in middle aged people. I have a little pet theory on why that's the case (which I will not claim to be an original theory or anything because I don't care enough and also I'm not sure if I read that somewhere or came up with it myself). But it goes something like this : Humans evolved to survive. To hunt. To find food. To protect themselves.
Put those humans in a place where they don't literally have to do these things , and the human brain starts to assign different thing the status of 'survival instincts'. This causes office workers and students to treat deadlines like predators and stuff like that , but eventually their rationale catches up. Even if you have a 'dream' or a 'meaning' in life that you try to substitute in place of the default 'Survival mode' , your rationale catches up. Eventually your monkey brain realizes that what you're doing is not what what it is meant to do.

The default setting for that thing is : "Monkey get food. Monkey happy."

Somehow , following that instinct, I've never gone into existential crisis. I guess that's all that insignificant humans need. Food. A way to get it. But not too much either either. Honestly , when I have good food , I feel happy. I don't really have good friends. I keep some guys around to call 'friends' just so that my parents don't bother me. But seriously, some sugar water and food is all I need to get in a good mood. If I ever run out of money for that , I'll probably do some job , but not to hoard money. I'll probably skip between menial jobs or something. That is all I need. Perhaps a room to stay , too. But it's not like that's too expensive either, since I live in India. I guess the greatest pain in the butt are my parents who have these things called 'expectations'.

Well, I guess I'll just ignore them.