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What are we here for?

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Over a million different species have been catalogued, with millions more to come, scientists say. Millions. The earth that we call home is billions of years old. Billions. Earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Many, many billions. With numbers this high, it is exceedingly narcissistic to think that human beings are more special than any other being. What we do with our lives ultimately does not matter, if you think about the brief time that we do have. I don’t want to come off as being Nihilistic here. I’m not saying that because we are such infinitesimal beings that we should do whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it, since none of it matters anyway. I am merely pointing to the fact that seventy to one hundred years of time on this planet is going to go by exceedingly quick for all of us who live that long, and even quicker for those of us who won’t live that long. It is appropriate for us to consider what to do with the time that we have been given.

My job as school teacher is important, but so is the job of the postal worker, the garbage collector, the grocery store worker, the custodian, the maintenance operator. . .  We all need to do our part to make this fleeting experience worthwhile. Yet, worthwhile is such a relative term. What is worthwhile to me might be looked upon by another as being worthless, and vice versa. The way in which we treat others and the world around us needs to be remarkable. The purpose of this life is not to puff out our chests and think ourselves superior, nor is it to do whatever it takes to make a profit. Each one of the millions of catalogued species is connected; we breathe the same air, we rely on the same sun to provide us with warmth, we drink the same water that has been around since before the dinosaurs reigned. Our existence needs to be universally worthwhile in this sense, and I’ll adapt a line from Bill S. Preston here to illuminate the sentiment: we simply need to be excellent to each other. Surely, this sentiment cannot easily be refuted.

So, as I am awake and breathing, I will look to be worthwhile, valuable, to those beings around me. I may only be one of over seven billion people, who are only one of millions of species, hurtling around a bright star on the crust of a cosmically diminutive rock, tucked away in a cranny of the universe, but I choose to spend my days knowing with an impregnable confidence that my actions can positively affect this existence. I am here to promote and instill hope and positivity in each thought, and to send that perception into the world as a pandemic, like it should be. This is what I am here for.

What are you here for?



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