There are too many things to worry about. Here's why you shouldn't …
There are too many things to worry about. Work, politics, school, family, people who want to be ‘Internet famous’ by posting YouTube prank videos.
So here's why you just shouldn’t care about any of that stuff, at all, ever again.
Descartes’ Discourse on the Method
In the mid-17th century, a French philosopher named René Descartes published his revolutionary essay Discourse on the Method. The work revolves around the idea that because dreams and “reality” often encompass the same things, neither can really be classified as “true” — and, as a result, you may not exist at all.
However, because one small part of you must think you exist at all times, there is at least something going on that you perceive as “true” — in the sense that it’s real or actually happening to you. Descartes thus coined the term “je pense, donc je suis,” which roughly translates to, “I think, therefore I am.”
If you’re lost right now, the Wachowski siblings made a documentary about Discourse on the Method in 1999 called the Matrix. Totally kidding … or are we?
Basically, the idea can be summed up like this: you absolutely could be reading this article right now while you’re taking an angry dump at work, or while chugging a bottle of wine after putting the kids down — if one of those is the reality you have either chosen or are forcibly shown. But, you could also be drooling on a dirty mattress in cell block D, tied up in a straight jacket while humming the Happy Birthday song to yourself. You just never know.
You’ve Never Actually Touched Anything
You’re probably thinking that there’s no way this is true, right? You have your fingers wrapped around your tablet as you read this, right? Well you’re only slightly correct. While you may have your digits draped over your iPad, you aren’t actually touching it.
You and everything else in our world is made up of atoms. An atom is the smallest unit of measurement of all things, living, nonliving, or otherwise. In the middle of every atom is its nucleus, orbiting around that nucleus are protons, electrons and a bunch of empty space for all those particles to frolic around in.
Pretty elementary so far right? Well here’s where it gets a little crazy. You see, particles like to attract their opposites and repel their similars — much like a magnet. So, since electrons like to hangout on the outside of atoms, and everything is made up of electrons, these particles always repel each other. The objects and the particles may get close to one another, but they will never actually, truly, touch.
We may think we feel the sensation of touch, for instance your ass on a sofa or that slice of pizza in your hand, but what you’re really “feeling” are electric impulses sent through nerve endings into your brain which interprets this as you touching something.
So, you’ve never actually kissed anyone, you’ve never actually pet an animal, and you’ve never actually hugged your grandma. You are, however, technically hovering right now — even if it’s at such a small degree that it’s undetectable by the human eye.
Yay physics!
Infinite Probability & Multiverse Theory
These theories are probably two of the most soul crushing theses that have ever been thought up (or may actually exist, at this point who really knows). Let’s start with Infinite Probability. This theory, like Descartes, can basically be summed up in one phrase: Anything can happen at any time.
So it’s absolutely possible that tomorrow your crush will walk up to you and start making out with you on the spot. But it’s about equally as possible for you to be mauled by a gorilla dressed as Batman.
Second, the Multiverse Theory deals with the hypothesis that there are an infinite number of Earths in an infinite number of universes. The theory goes that there is a universe for any and every possible situation. There are universes with slight changes, such as you going left instead of right on your drive to work, but there are also ones where you’re dead. There are whole universes where your parents never meet and you don’t exist, hell there are universes where mammals never evolved from fish.
We aren’t talking just a handful of universes here either. In half of the total number of universes, which is infinite, you are either dead or don’t exist at all. And in some of the universes, you’re tortured daily, beaten constantly or have to personally deal with Kanye West as an acquaintance.
Of course, there is also a universe where you are the literal king of the world and are married to Kate Upton — so take the bad with the good.
You are mortal
One day you will die. No one knows for sure what happens after death, be it some type of heaven, hell or nothing at all.
Each of us has a biological clock ticking away, drawing ever closer to our expiration date printed on our left butt cheek. If you’ve never seen yours, please take a few seconds and check it out …
… if that actually worked, your clock may be ticking a little faster than most. On average, Americans live around 85.5 years (84.3 for Males, 86.6 for Females). That means you have less than a century to fill your meaningless, untouchable, possibly delusional life with whatever the hell you choose.
So why choose to fill it with a bunch of things you just don’t give a fuck about?
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