Finding meaning in our insignificance

Finding meaning in our insignificance

We live our lives with the aspiration for achieving some significance and permanence: beautifying our bodies, amassing wealth and possessions, glorifying ourselves, earning name and fame and building a legacy that we hope will endure through generations. No wonder, a large majority across the globe carries a sense of entitlement that they should be admired, celebrated, and worshipped because they are special. They go to great lengths making the world believe that they are special: buying luxurious vehicles and lavish homes on mortgage, creating iconic personal brands and doing almost anything and everything that will build their presence on social media.

Despite these zealous efforts, the significance they attain is short-lived, ephemeral and shadows of insignificance always continue to haunt them. This worries them incessantly, and they exhaust their energies trying to battle oblivion. The narratives of any person, culture or nation are eventually lost to history and history itself is lost to the ticking away of time.

Although the need to feel good about oneself is universal and a healthy self-esteem is an important prerequisite for a deeper self-growth, worrying too much about our self-image can make us feel misshapen and fragile. These negative feelings instill a strong fear of rejection in our psyche, forcing us to either withdraw from the world or go to great lengths in seeking validation from it.

The human mind faces a great difficulty in acknowledging and accepting that it is indeed very insignificant on the cosmic level. Out of billions of planets in our galaxy, we inhabit a tiny entity called the Earth. Our universe has several such galaxies, and each galaxy would have billions of stars, solar systems, and planets. What we understand about ourselves and this unfathomable universe is based on the bandwidth of our existing mental capacities – it might be completely wrong or at best a tiny sliver of the eternal, cosmic truth.

As we sit down to reflect on this truth, do we have a reason to feel despair? Because if we are so inconsequential and destined to remain insignificant forever, why are we always looking for that elusive moment of self-aggrandisement? Perhaps, here lies the seed of a great self-discovery and a complete liberation from suffering. Let us accept wholeheartedly that we do not matter and, therefore, there is no point in building a tiny, false, and pompous self. We can simply be: be who we are, be who we want to be and be free from the pulls and pushes of social conditionings. We can be in a way that makes us happy, content, and free from regrets.

We can also let others be for who they are, and we can be with them in celebrating their unique journeys. Race, religion, political boundaries, linguistic hegemonies, economic divides are nothing but flawed constructions of our narcissistic mind to feel separate and special. When we let go of these divides, our hearts blossom with empathy, kindness, and joy. Our eyes see differently, our hearts open and our souls unite in helping each other in finding some meaning and contentment in this insignificant existence in our vast, eternal, unknowable universe.