somewhere along the line consciousness noticed it was conscious, and we've been trying to recover ever since.
zoom out.
from far enough away, the morning commute is just a lot of metal boxes that know the route but not the reason. office buildings look like hives.
zoom out.
people cope in different ways. some go nihilist: nothing matters, so anything goes. some build up certainty instead, with religion or ideology or a career or a legacy, and keep stacking it higher. and some look straight at the meaninglessness and make meaning anyway, like a jazz musician who knows the tune is made up and plays it with total conviction.
zoom out further.
we're accidents on a rock flying through space, and we still build empires and stock markets without being able to explain why we exist. there's no manual for this. everyone's improvising.
zoom in a bit.
the closer we look at anything, the blurrier it gets. solid things turn out to be mostly empty space, and every answer comes with new questions. we even write books about the limits of books, which is kind of funny.
zoom in closer.
we put everything in containers. pill organizers split the day into morning and night. old versions of ourselves go into moving boxes in our parents' attics. we sort life into spreadsheet cells and feelings into emoji reactions, and it never quite fits.
we do the same with time. we cut it into years and hours, monday meetings and friday drinks, as if the universe cares about calendars. then five minutes of meditation feels like an hour, and an evening with someone you love is over in ten minutes.
zoom in.
even coping gets absurd. we try mindfulness and then worry we're doing it wrong. we make memes about how nothing matters, and then the memes matter.
and when consciousness tries to look at itself, it changes. it's like trying to bite your own teeth. we wake up every morning sure we're the same person, like a ship that's had every part replaced and still has the same name.
pause.
i think camus was right about sisyphus. the boulder-rolling isn't meaningful in itself, but sisyphus owns it. kids build sandcastles knowing the tide will come in, and they build them anyway, with moats and shells and everything.
maybe that's the best answer we get. notice how absurd it all is, keep rolling the boulder, and laugh when it rolls back down.
zoom in until you can see the atoms.
zoom in until meaning dissolves.
zoom in, zoom in, zoom in.