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I started to really notice that I dissociate, sometimes, in the spring of 2023. 

Well actually, it was a bit before then — but it only became a noticeable problem in the spring. As it turns out, after plenty of reflection, I’ve concluded that this isn’t a new thing for me — sometimes I’d just do it, for some reason; even as a kid. Maybe it’s not that surprising, in actuality, that someone who thinks too much about everything — scrutinizes and takes apart whatever I can find — would sometimes have trouble keeping themselves properly in the world.

Well I only started noticing that not everything was normal, in this regard, spring of 2023 — or maybe a bit before then, if we’re being pedantic. And, being a reasonable person, I wanted to not be dissociating. At the very least I wanted to be able to tell when I actually was. Sometimes it’s hard to know — it can be a bit difficult to distinguish hating your body from feeling apart from it. So — walking to class or working in the library — I’d sometimes look down at my hand. To check if I was still there. And sometimes when I looked down it wouldn’t look right at all, and I knew it was too late.

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I’m not sure if you’d get this from just reading my blog, but sometimes I think about kind of depressing stuff.

Well, regardless of what you’ve noticed, I do think about somewhat nihilistic things — or adjacent ones, at least — from time to time. The thing is, I always find myself confused whenever I see someone else doing this. Because it seems so common to insist that if nothing matters, in an objective sense at least, then there’s no point to living. I get that much, you’re basically just reasserting the same premise twice. If nothing ever matters then living won’t either, that’s just how subsets work. But then everyone takes this to mean we should just end it all — and that’s where I get lost.

There’s some kind of privilege we seem to give to all the negative and intrusive thoughts, when we get nihilistic. But none of that follows. If nothing matters, if nothing has any value, then there’s no reason to want death. 

There’s no reason to want anything.

No reasons at all.

For anything; yet everyone takes it to be the truest and most compelling justification for death, when the whole point is it being nothing of the sort.

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One of the most romantic acts that exists is holding someone’s hand, for me that is — or at least it can be, with the right person.

Just in case anyone is interested in that fact. Or wants plans for tonight…

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Lots of people I know, or know of, love to say that the map is not the territory.

Not to say that I’m smarter than everyone about this too, but I think this “saying” makes a rather critical error. There is no territory, even if there are maps. We’re all just stumbling through the dark, and we pretend that the crude things we’re tripping over are somehow more special than the pictures we have in our mind.

The thing is, the nihilists are right. Nothing looks like anything. And if you stare at your hand long enough you’ll finally realize this — though you’ll lose whatever test you had for measuring dissociation too. But it’s very hard to imagine the world from a point of view we’re incapable of — regardless of how much you stare at your hand. Try visualizing your bedroom with the eyes of a fly, and then get back to me.

And people miss this fact — because everything’s relative. There isn’t a true view of the world. There is no territory. Merely different ways of relating things to one another. Maybe that’s through specific wavelengths of light hitting our retinas, or maybe it’s matrices full of physics data. But it’s all just a wayof communicating — we’re just biased towards thinking ourviewpoint is the true state of the universe, when in truth nothing actually is.

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Nothing matters.

And sometimes I get into a mood, and my imagination runs wild. It’s like standing on a beach, as the sun finally is eclipsed by the horizon; all the sunset colors faded to near black-blue. And the waves crash over the sand, and in the distance is the sound of water churning over itself — but there’s not enough light to see any of that, only the idea of sound. 

It’s cold, and the wind blows sand a few centimeters off the ground. In the far distance — either behind or on the other side of the waves — there are the signs of life; streetlights and chimney smoke, like stars and fog against the distant skyline. And there’s the sensation of the world curving in and over itself — because it’s not really real, and sometimes our imagination is a bit hyperbolic. 

I can reach my hand out, and without looking I can feel the weight of these images against my palm. I can stretch a finger out and send a ripple into the waves or feel the sting of the wind. And it’s not quite peaceful — actually, it’s certainly not that feeling — but there’s a kind of calmness to the silhouettes, and the sensation of having my imagination wash over me. I can feel the images running along my arms and down my torso into the ground, and I still don’t really know how to make someone else see what I experience. 

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It’s not that I reject that nothing matters — it’s that I understand what that means.

There’s no objective truth to our world. No god above and no moral laws below, etched into the structure of atoms. There’s merely perspectives; different methods for processing the information physical computation generates. And everyone seems to think this means something it doesn’t.

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I don’t know if you’ve ever truly looked at something, but eventually it loses all sense. Like saying a word over and over again — eventually it’s just sounds or squiggles on a page. We like to pretend that this lacking is the abnormal state of things, but we aren’t born with words in our heads. We learn them, create that meaning. The default state is inconceivable to us — because how do you think without language? I’d like to hear you explain that one, at least. And the fact is this applies to everything; it’s not just spelling or your own hand. It’s everything — everyone. That’s the truth of the world.

That there is none.

Maybe you have to dissociate a few dozen times to truly understand, but eventually — if you stare hard enough — you’ll see it. 

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One day, quite soon if we’re being honest, all of my paycheck will be gone and spent. On food and student loan payments; some books or a game; maybe a cute date if we’re lucky. But it will be gone, one day. 

Are the dollars I’m paid worth nothing, simply because of this fact? It all fades to zeros in my checking account, so it might as well be that now.

Insanity.

That, or you should venmo me your pension.

And this too, is why I’m always so confused when people see the inherent meaninglessness of the universe — see that all crumbles to dust one day — and then assert there can be no value made today. 

I don’t wish people happy birthday or hold doors open because I expect it to imprint monuments and legacies upon the future — I just want to be kind and loving today. To express and act in the ways that are important to me, not to the hypotheticals of tomorrow.

It doesn’t matter if I’m dead a hundred years from now! The moments made memories of today still carry their weight — to me at least — for we exist in now, not some distant future.

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Nothing matters. 

And there’s something freeing in that. 

Maybe I’m broken, or insane, but when I really think about this stuff it makes me want to laugh. That’s as appropriate a reaction as suicide ideation — because  again, there is no inherent truth to anything. No inherent reaction you must conform to. No universal guiding hand.

So maybe you should try to see things from my perspective. There’s no reason not to, after all.

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Do you live or love solely for the sake of atomic moral law — whatever ethics might be held inside the fundamental building blocks of all that is — or for the gods in Olympus? 

I suppose the latter one actually is a common refrain, if you generalize; but I wasn’t raised religious. And even if I was, how much would I actually care if divinity came down to tell me all I value is worthless — that my family or friends were nothing?

I’m not living for answers found in the stars, and so the fact there are none above will never dissuade me from caring about what is below.

There’s no objective truth. And maybe we’ll all be dead in a few years — or a hundred. And I do care about the death part, but I also only ever wanted to live for my own values; not for the abstract. So I don’t care that there’s no true god-given reason for anything — nihilism is a state of nothing, it could never have guided your actions anyway. 

So I choose for myself.

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And so there’s the final mistake everyone seems to make.

Sure, there’s no objective truth — in the way everyone means when they grapple with the purpose of life. And I can see why that’s scary; it would be nice to know there’s a right answer — at least if you’re kind of nerdy, and you love solving systems or earning gold stars. But the mistake then, when we find out that there is no metaphysical sticker sheet, is to assume that there can be no answer at all.

We merely need to make our own.

And there will never be some “true” justification — but if that was your actual benchmark then you’d have to throw out all mathematical axioms and the rules of grammar as well. Sometimes, the only way to live is to assert truth onto reality, not to discover it.

So you have to clasp your hand around it, and hold it tight — whatever it is your answer becomes.

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It’s valentine’s day, and I don’t have a date, so you’ll have to forgive me for being both sappy and philosophical, and for all the things I say next. Maybe a candlelit dinner could have gotten it out of my system, but in lieu we’ll have to settle for whatever this is.

And I know this is ironic for a nihilist to say, while single, but I think — in some ways — I can be a bit of a romantic.

I mean I’m not actually a nihilist, you should look at my blog’s logo — but if nothing matters then none of that potential irony does either.

So yeah, I think there’s something deeply romantic about holding hands. We can never truly know if we see the world as anyone else does. If you stare too long at anything it becomes nonsensical; because all sense is only ever relative. And when people hear this they get sad, and nihilistic, and somehow take all this to mean they’re not allowed to care about anything ever again. That they’re not allowed to live.

We are but flimsy paper thin creatures. The light of distant stars travels millennia, and that energy finds its way into our food. Then we lose it all again, when we pull another person close, and as our skin touches theirs.

So there’s a romanticism in simple things — like holding hands. Like existing in the presence of another. There really is no objective universe, in the way we like to imagine. No true truth. No point of view we need to defer to. In fact, in deeply important ways, we may all be inhabiting entirely different realities. Each person a world unto themselves — a multiverse muddling about every city.

So the romance is to not care — and instead to reach your hand over and grab theirs. To choose to care about something more important. To accept that if you stared too long at one another it would lose all sense, and we’d just be molecular soup — and to grab them anyway, and smile as you look into their eyes, and let your laughter pass the night away.

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A wise man once said that to exist is a choice, and one we’re under no obligation to make.

That to care is an act of cosmic rebellion, one we don’t have to partake in.

That love is to make a hard decision. To draw an arbitrary line around a set of molecules and fluids and somehow find the will to treasure any of it. To find a reason to ground yourself in this universe.

And sometimes it makes me feel sappy and romantic, when other people make these choices for me. And, to the best that I can, I want to choose those same things for them — to express affection by simply going about my day to day, as if any of it were truly normal.

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So it’s not that I reject that nothing matters, it’s not even that I don’t care. That’s kind of the point of it all, really. I do — I care about all the people I love, loved, and may one day yet love. 

And I don’t mean it justas the kind of love that leads you to marriage. I looked at the world and my own hand, and I looked so hard I started to laugh. Then I realized nothing matters, and still I choose to care about it all anyway.

To value and cherish my family and my friends. To desire joy and warmth.

So I’m sorry, I can’t tell you what to care about — in the way you maybe wish some god would — only that nothing matters. But I can tell you that even though that’s true, it doesn’t matter anyway; just in case you weren’t paying attention. I can tell you that, despite it all, I do care — about all I’ve described, here and elsewhere. That there is this thing I call value, and I think its beautiful, even if the universe doesn’t.

And there’s something that I feel very deep in my core — when I think about that. It feels warm, or maybe it’s like looking at the ocean after sunset. This powerful feeling. To care so deeply it overrides the fundamental lacking of the universe.

And that something as simple as holding the hand of another is enough to create that meaning.

I think there is some romanticism to that, in an ever broad sense of the word.

So, even on those dark nights, or when everything is confusing and nonsensical, it’s important to remember that you’re allowed to exist — you’re allowed to love — and there was never any reason not to.

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