What do you live for?

[Iroscato]

I will answer what stops me from killing myself first.
Here we are, on this 12,000km - wide rock orbiting a stable nuclear explosion, that has existed for more than 4 1/2 billion years before I came along...and will continue to exist for 5 billion years after I'm gone. Our planet is just one in quite possibly hundreds of sextillions, and is most likely nearly unique in its ability to support life. This ancient cosmos in which we reside is billions of light-years across - far too large to comprehend with our puny human brains, which are also the most advanced and complex objects that we know of, far exceeding the power of any supercomputer we are capable of building.

In the face of this disquieting immensity, complexity and history, I believe that no earthly problem we encounter is insurmountable. Call it a religion, a belief system, what have you. Call it head-in-the-clouds nonsense. All I know is, it gives me a lot of perspective, has seen me through some tough times, and is what I draw on when I start to feel the bite of depression.


What do I live for? That is somewhat harder to explain. I don't have especially lofty goals - a good job, plenty of sex, and good times with my friends and family (or perhaps an extremely careful combination of several of these at once) are my main goals, and so far I'm quite good at achieving all of these, dry spell notwithstanding. If you want to go deeper, I do want to leave the world a better place than I found it, however small a change it may be. So yeah, the same as most people's goals in life, really.