The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

At the base of almost everything, the resulting truth is this: we don’t know. When we disregard this unknowingness, we can easily become disinterested, uninspired, and worn out of this life. We can put great stress on things that perhaps don’t matter all that much and neglect experiences and things that do. We can feel the pressure and anxiety of c

Perhaps there is a way through pessimism that leads to an adapted and more reasonable optimism—not the sort of delusional optimism that is ignorant to the somber truths of our condition, but rather, an optimism that exists in spite of it all.

In the dirt of life, it is up to us to plant the seeds, watch the flowers grow, and enjoy their beauty, even in spite of the fact that we know that they will die.

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence,”

“[t]he only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.”

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,” said renowned theoretical physicist Richard Feynman.

To give up on life entirely would be like refusing to play a game because we lose sometimes, as if the game would even be worth playing if we knew we were going to win every time we played. There is courage in facing the realities of pessimism and there is strength to be formed in its name. We must be pessimistic about life’s conditions in order to

we have already begun down this path, and it is too late to turn around and unknow what we now know. And so, the key is not to stop but to continue down and onward in order to find a new ground of existence in which we can bear and live comfortably with truth, or the lack thereof.

In other words, the experience and effects of concrete knowledge can be fleeting, but the wonder found in the spirit of the unknown can be constant and enduring.