01 // on existentialism

Individuality, identity, the self, the very body in which we inhabit, even in its ontology, much less its existential significance, is no more than a hilarious prank which the cascades of Darwinian selection has played on us. One does not need to look any further than the groups of friends beside them or up towards the flickering expanse of the vast infinitum laying beyond the night sky to feel that familiar dread peering. It can even be an exercise of numbers. There is everyone, in the range of some eight billion, then those you may know, or those who may know you, perhaps in some thousands, and now those you care deeply about whom you may call your friends, and finally yourself, where there is only one of. Sonder is the neologism coined for this particular realization, that there exists this many lives, all of which are just as complicated as your own, each with assortments of acquaintances, families, lovers, pets, mysterious rashes, and late-night guilty pleasures, nearly all of whom have far too many loved ones to celebrate or mourn your life. And even if you, in your unyielding grit, have you found purpose as a part of a greater humanity, the nothingness, the everythingness of this backdrop that is our universe, the sheer inconceivable vastness of it, on which we are no more than nothing, should at least be a reminder of how meaningless we really are, objectively. This egocentric view that we consider to be almost a priori, is, adorably, laughably, pointlessly, no truer than the biblical geocentrism humanity had accepted, no matter how much we want to believe it. There is nothing for you, no purpose, no reason, no care. You exist, and that is all that is given. The sooner you can accept this, the sooner you can be free.