“When everything matters.”

H,

There is often this grain of thought in popular culture about the tiny nature of the human experience compared to the vastness of the universe. The tale is spun that we do not really matter, our efforts are all dust and we will simple be forgotten by time and space when we become extinct as a race. I admit I like this line. It suits my nihilistic ideas about the nature of being. It had a nice ring to it when I was much younger but I am not sure this was because of some scientific enthusiasm for the vastness of outer space.

My aims were still very close to earth and my particular patch of it. I felt if nothing mattered because our time on earth was a grain of sand on an endless beach then nothing I did truly mattered. I was trying to be free of guilt, of anger, of disappointment and of the fear of giving account for the stewardship of a life I barely understood. I was afraid of engaging life so the idea of being the third planet to the left in one solar system of many more unknown meant that it did not matter what I did. It was all an abyss, anyway.

Of course this is a silly way to look at life. It is almost as silly as saying everything I do is of such extreme importance that I will shake the fabric of time itself by picking the red pill over the blue pill. There is a place where everything matters but it is not in my head or in my inflated or deflated opinions about myself.

If we are eternal beings, if we live in the light of some cosmic wisdom from the steady hand of a creator and if we fall into line with the wide view of love then everything we do matters in a more introspective way than we imagine. There are more depths in the human soul fathomable than in the Universe unfathomable and, as yet, unreachable. We cannot avoid the imperative of being a full human being for the speculative fiction of the universe uncharted. I did this a lot as a child.

Growing up needs a deeper look at what it means to matter.