I’m twenty seven in a couple of days. I spent the majority of my twenties and late teens unwittingly overindulging. Overindulgence, meaningless pleasure and fabricated versions of reality, leading to compulsive and addictive behaviour, psychological ailments, financial overindulgence and a lack of meaning. Or I spent the majority of my twenties and late teens surrounding myself with meaningful relationships, searching for true love and learning and attempting to uncover meaning. The nature of time is a tricky concept to grasp. Both versions of my past are true but dependent on perceptions and interpretations of history. We lose the majority of an event the second it’s over because our minds erase what it believes to be unnecessary based on how we’re feeling at the time, with little to no contemplation or discussion with ourselves, so it’s easy to taint our pasts with everything we perceive to be negative, if we think in this way. My coming of age was at a time of vast change. Of course every generation can say this and they would be right but what was unique about my growth was technology and our complete unpreparedness for its incredibly fast-moving change. We, as children, were given the internet with no context as to what the consequences of such a boundless space would be. I went from knocking on friends doors to sending a message via a satellite in space within a few years. I went from fantasising about models pinned to my bedroom walls to viewing more naked women than my brain could handle (literally). My childhood was a time of both unrestricted freedom and limited movement. A time of great meaning and a time of intense numbness and nihilism. So please forgive me if I am only just now taking the reigns of my life and steering it towards meaning and away from meaningless pleasure, indulgence and compulsive behaviour. We all have multiple versions of history and it’s dependent on our temperament, mood and perceptions. I tell you this because I have found the most effective manner to view my past and my future to the best of my abilities in order to live a meaningful, not happy, life. A life of courage, fear and progress. I’ve contemplated, researched, meditated, studied and searched inwardly for theanswers to my questions. Why did I feel little meaning? Why did I struggle to move forward? Why did I find comfort in compulsion and pleasure? How did I find meaning? How did I stumble across this productive and meaningful mindset that I now occupy?

To believe that everything you do is meaningful is a wise guide towards the path of progress

Our lives are filled with aspects that we cannot control. We are lucky in some respects and unlucky in others. We are born to parents we didn’t choose, in a country we didn’t choose, with privilege or lack of privilege we didn’t choose, with good looks or lack of good looks we didn’t choose, so it can be easy to be cynical about the world and curse it for this cruel fate you’ve been dealt. The easy way is actually to live a meaningless life, not a meaningful one. To live meaninglessly is to fail to live up to your potential, it’s failing and blaming it on everything but yourself. To live in this nihilistic pattern is to live the easy but unfulfilling life. The path of nihilism is to believe that theworld, the universe and everything that occurs within it has no meaning, everything does not happen for a reason, what you do does not matter. Of course that sounds objectively plausible given that humans have occupied this world for hundreds of thousands of years and will continue to occupy this world for long after you’re gone. We live in a minuscule ripple within a humongous lake of time, therefore what we do can seem insignificant. This may all be true. Or maybe it’s just objectively true. Perhaps fundamentally, this mindset is an intellectual failing so catastrophic that it has the potential to kill innocent children.

It is not a hyperbole to say that thinking nihilistically makes the world inherently worse and you are to partially blame for that. So perhaps, instead of thinking simply, you should think fundamentally. To believe that everything you do is meaningful is a wise guide towards the path of progress. It guides us towards making the world better. Unfortunately, it’s also the path of most resistance. It’s climbing to the top of what you believe to be the highest mountain, only to see a higher one in the distance and repeating this again and again and again. It’s sacrificing your comfort today for a meaningful tomorrow. It’s killing yourself, to be reborn a better person. Its bearing thehorrendously heavy burden of responsibility on your shoulders, never passing it on to others. It’s the struggle for meaning.

We live in a minuscule ripple within a humongous lake of time

If we all believed that what we do is incredibly meaningful, how much better would the world be? It starts with you, the responsibility of meaning falls, solely, at your feet. Therefore, we must all bear the burden of meaning and get to work. The alternative is death, both metaphorical and literal.

Keep On Struggling

Gregor

Bar I Frequent Regularly - Basement Bar

“Great chat, tasty food, a cracking’ selection of mezcal and tequila…” (2) is how they describe themselves, although the large selection of tequila has unwanted consequences as I’m finding out as I write this after a night ornamented by various shots including a ‘Craig David’ (a shot of tequila followed by a shot of pineapple juice). Be warned, these go down easy but pack a vicious punch the next morning.

To find out more, click below.

CLICK HERE

Book I’m Enjoying - Defeat by Christian Watson & Ajaz Ahmed

“A book about life, failure, and environment. A heart-filled collection of over 200 pages of short stories as co-authored by Ajaz Ahmed and Christian Watson alongside a photographic exploration of North West from Canada to Alaska” (3). I am lucky enough to own one of the limited 2,000 first edition copies of this book and it was more than worth the price tag. I just started it last week and the beauty of the photographs on the large, thick-papered pages as well as the poetic and emotional writing have me hooked. It’s not often I read a book that correlates poetic text with equally poetic imagery.

To find out more, click below.

CLICK HERE

Podcast Episode I Find Interesting - Jordan Peterson on The Lex Fridman Podcast

Lex Fridman is an AI researcher at MIT and beyond and his podcast comprises of conversations about science, technology, history, philosophy and the nature of intelligence, consciousness, love and power (5). This particular episode delves deep into Jordan Peterson and Fridman’s views on God, TheBible, Peterson’s fame, the war between Russia and Ukraine and much more.

Watch the episode on YouTube below.

CLICK HERE

Quote to Ponder

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted - William Bruce Cameron

References

1) Basement Bar Image - Open Table

2) Basement Edinburgh Website

3) defeat.com

4) Defeat Image - Defeat.com

5) The Lex Fridman Podcast