The Matter of Agency; Nothing Actually Matters

     With your feet flat on the ground and your head more or less centered atop your shoulders, it's very apparent and obvious which way is up, and which way is down. Put on a space suit and launch yourself out of the atmosphere, and suddenly those concepts become a little more vague, especially the farther you get from the planet you orient yourself from. Up and down become farther and closer, left and right become even more subjective than they are from the surface of the planet from which your distance grows. 

     Imagine a world where everyone ages in the same progression of Benjamin Button, starting out wrinkled, weathered, and grouchy, and becoming smoother and more energetic as their life passes. In this world, "youth" takes on an entirely different meaning. In a world where those who appear "young" to us are in fact approaching death sooner than their apparent "elders," the appearance of youth would develop connotations of the onset of death, and might be regarded as a negative thing. 

     One of the cool things about the world we live in is that there are theories and beliefs that the world depicted above exists somewhere either in our universe, or a parallel one in the multiverse. What might happen if we from our world were to interact with those from Benjamin Button Planet? What kind of agreements might we be able to reach? How would the context of our words be interpreted by our counterparts? If you continue this pattern of backwardsness in other aspects, other qualities of the lives we lead and consider "normal," at some point words lose all meaning. We can only communicate successfully by our own standards with someone who has had enough similar experiences to you that they can relate meaning to the words you use. Every One outside of that is arguably irrelevant. Consider for a moment what you know about the relative size of the earth to the sun. Furthermore, consider the distance between our star the sun and the next closest star we're aware of. Think of how many stars you can see in even a moderately light-polluted night sky. Think of how small we are on our little planet. Whether this scares you or gives you awe is also arguably irrelevant. 

     Think of how long it's been since life appeared on earth, how much it's been through. How often do these things affect your life in any way? Very distantly, sure, but does it matter? Even if you think of people who could conceive of a people whose place we have taken, those who imagined what our lives might have been like from far enough back were likely considered either insane, or prophets who have now been long forgotten. 

     In the modern world as we know it today, those who hold the metaphorical reins of any given industry from which you consume as a member of an economy, only care about you as much as you are relevant to them, which often comes in the form of numbers, which fluctuate often. As an individual, you're closer to not mattering to them than you are to mattering. Same goes for governments. 

     Now, i'm aware of how bleak and shitty this all seems. I might as well have just personally directed you towards a black hole to let yourself get sucked into, come what may after, survival or not. Honestly, as individuals we are sort of meaningless... If one person with--for arguments sake--only one relationship, built a rocket and flew into and out of a black hole with no information on his experience outside what he could recount, he'd be deemed insane, not at all taken seriously, and ultimately would be forgotten. It will never have mattered. 

     On the other hand, what if NASA or SpaceX flew a vessel into and out of a black hole and brought back loads and loads of mechanically and digitally recorded information to reference and use among many people. Remember the story of the US landing a rocket on the moon? There was recently a whole movie released recently dedicated to ensuring credit be given to those forgotten who were involved in that accomplishment. Could you imagine being the pilot of the first rocket to fly in and out of a black hole? Of course, based on the information and theories we have now, surviving even a close encounter with a black hole would probably be impossible, but the idea's just for arguments sake. 

     With all this in mind, consider for a moment the possibility that you, an individual, might end up being the first to accomplish any particular feat you might imagine is within the reach of human potential. Think of all the things we haven't done yet. You could get cynical and say human potential amounts to ultimate self-destruction, or you could imagine yourself in a position, in a relationship that enables you to be the one to convince someone to change their mind about destroying the world. We already live in a reality where science fiction becomes real modern technology, where unlikely but true events live on to become old and urban legends. We live in a world that more or less collectively agrees on the truth of the history recorded depicting Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, and at a stretch characters like Buddha or Jesus (the latter on an especially far stretch considering the time that's aged his story). If these people were individuals, how did they have such an influence on those around them, an influence that reaches so many decades into a future they never got to experience? 

     You might be someone who believes something along the lines of "oh little old me won't be the one to do those things. I'm just a regular person." Or maybe your luck seems sour more than it is good, and you imagine the world has to walk on someone to stand, and you're one of those under tread. Maybe life just isn't that great for you and you could honestly take or leave the one you have. Maybe you hate everyone and you want the world to end. 

     At the end of the day, nothing happens in your life and nothing gets done unless you DO something. You, who most likely has two hands, two feet, eyes ears and a mouth, and most importantly: A Brain. You are a human, just like all those people you hear about and wanna be like. Even with nothing else in common, this fact ties you to every single other human on the planet, those present, past, and yet to exist. 

     You've probably heard the old saying, "Jack of all trades, master of none." Humans are sort of a jack of all trades by being so advanced in the technology we can put together, as well as in our physiology. We can overcome most natural environmental adversaries, and to a much greater degree if you include the technology we have. Beyond that, we've developed a great many different luxuries and complexities for ourselves to live with. The one trait i attribute to making a person more human is adaptability. If you can adapt to a situation, you can overcome it, survive, or possibly use it to improve yourself or the quality of the life you lead. The history of humans and all the things we were before we were human were examples of the thing we're really good at, which is adapting. 

     We even adapt to each other and society by adapting to the conditioning we undergo while being raised. Regardless of what action a child takes, the adults around them have either a conscious and intentional reaction of delivering consequences for actions we don't like, and rewards for actions we do like, or an unconscious and reactive response that subconsciously communicates to a child the way we feel about whatever they just did. By every aspect of the way adults behave around children, we're communicating with them the ways we feel, and conditioning them to be more like us. There are a lot of expectations to fill as we age, and we typically tend to fulfill them, eventually often if not promptly when expected. We are the way we are because we sort of decided this was the way we wanted to be--each of us individually, as well as the whole of humanity and all it's subsections. 

You can do anything as long as you can do the work it takes. Wanting is part of the work. Sometimes it takes more than one try. If you're lucky--and you're probably lucky--the work comes in small bite-size parts. Sometimes it takes getting help. Sometimes the work is messy, or uncomfortable, and being patient enough to follow it through to the end is the hardest thing to do. But you can do hard things, because you can do anything. 

      You can do anything. You can do most anything you set your mind to, if you want it bad enough. That person you fantasize of being is someone you can actually become. That world issue you want to solve is solveable, and even if you personally aren't the one to solve it, you can absolutely contribute to a movement. You, as a single, individual human being already have some level of influence over those with whom you keep relationships. You even have some level of influence over those you simply interact with, once or a hundred times. Even those you never interact with who might end up consuming something you produced, be it material or non-material, are influenced by your existence. Sure, in a lot of ways you may be replaceable, but no one else can do things quite exactly like you can. No one else comes from all the same places, no one else has your particular flair or style or attitude. The degree of your individuality is arguably irrelevant. You have a life to do things with just like everyone else does, and you can do whatever you want with it. Your life is no one else's. There's no trading or swapping out, and whether or not you believe in reincarnation, you get one chance at this life. One time around with the particular opportunities you have in this day and age, with these relationships with these people you know.

     What i'm trying to tell you is that in a world where nothing matters, you get to do whatever you want to with this one life you have right now. As you live, you are perpetually and simultaneously experiencing and dictating the very forefront of the life you will have lived that is currently passing you by, one second, one flake of dead skin, one decision at a time. No matter how old you are, you have time to at least try if nothing else, and with that luck i mentioned, you just might end up doing whatever you set yourself to just in time.

     Even in a world where nothing actually matters, there is still the matter of your agency, and regardless of what we don't know about the reason for it's existence, it exists. Especially in a world where nothing matters, you should do exactly whatever you want to, for no other reason than that you want it. The trick is to remember that your life is probably going to be longer than you have forethought for, up until you hit halfway, and if you're still alive, entertain the possibility that however old you are might still only be halfway. Life is long, and with the technology that exists and continues to develop, it's getting longer for each person, every day.

     In a world that you are the exact center of, it's could be boiled down to coincidence that the like individuals that surround you experience a very similar concept of "up." For all we know, you could be the only person that actually exists, and everyone around you could simply be a projection. Decide what you think is best, and do it. Leave yourself room to grow and get better, because the sky's the limit, and the sky at some undistinguished point becomes space, or in other words, the universe. Do things that make sense. Experiment with cause and effect, find ways to learn the things you want to know, figure out how to enable yourself to feel good things with as little compromise as possible. Set goals, and reach them. Start small but start now. Nothing matters... and you can do anything.

     So have fun.