Friday, August 29, 2008

Why I look at the world differently than most people

"I miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world."
-Time to Pretend by MGMT

On first listening to this song, I didn't understand how or why a person would miss the weight of the world, but upon further thought, the meaning became obvious. To miss the weight of the world is to miss the feeling that your thoughts and actions and life could change the world, that you have the power to make a difference. In many ways, having the weight of the world on your shoulders is way better than feeling completely insignificant.
A few days after realizing this, I came to this conclusion: I find it comforting that I am so tiny in comparison to the rest of the universe. I love that I am just one small part, one piece of the puzzle that is existence. I don't want the weight of the world on my shoulders, I would much rather be a fraction of a part of something much larger. To me, every living thing has its place, its piece in the puzzle; and because of this, we are all connected. How could someone ever feel alone or minuscule when they are part of something so huge?
I don't understand why people are so determined to make their lives "matter". If your life is important, your existence is key to the continuance of existence itself, doesn't that put a lot of pressure on you? What if you screw up? What if the world ends all because of you? But if you opt to be..no..understand that you are just one pixel in the big picture, there is no pressure. Even if you screw up, there are billions of other living beings to rectify your mistakes, in time. As one small part of the universe, failure does not exist for you. Not only will any 'mistake' you do make be reversed in time as the universe lives on, but what you view as a mistake my save the life of another human being. In day to day life, living things are constantly affecting the courses of each others' existences. This chain of causes and effects shape the history of our planet, our galaxy, and our universe. In this way, every living organism in the universe "matters"; ever living organism has "purpose". People don't need to make some huge change in the world to matter, all they need to do is exist, and so far, they seem to have that down.

1 comment:

alice ayres said...

Alex, great first entry! I agree with you but I think that the reason we want to make our life matter is for glory. We want to be remembered. I think it's similar to how everybody dreams of being an actor in movies and on TV so they can be known and recognized... so someone can look at the TV screen and say, "Oh my that is (insert name here)." I agree that we shouldn't live life under so much pressure, we're going to die anyway.