TL;DR: Death is coming and thus your action brings meaning to life. Your biochemistry will distract you from this mission. To be human is to be aware of these facts and act accordingly.

The cosmic perspective

In the vast universe that is 14 billion years old, a tiny clump of matter comes together and therein sparks a gleam of consciousness.

That is me. I am the clump of matter.

I am here only temporarily, before quickly dissolving back into nothingness.

After that there will be an eternity - again.

The human vantage points

Looking at a child’s birth and onwards, life inevitably seems to be a progression towards death.

But looking at the infinite darkness before and after life, life is a chance, within which I am gifted the ability to do something and feel something, instead of nothing.

That’s why parents think their children should be thankful to be born, and children sometimes resent their parents for giving them life, as each is standing on their own vantage point.

The countdown to death

Everyday I wake up, death is yet another day closer.

There might be at most 80 functional years in my life. If one day is counted in one second, there is around 8 hours of countdown to death.

And death is coming no matter what.

The awareness of death brings meaning to life

For as long as immortality is unsolved, thanks to death, life is worth acting on.

There is no destined mission though. There is no recipe, no instructions written anywhere. Religious texts written a few thousand years ago brought structure to the agricultural life, are now slowly fading into irrelevance. The more humankind understands their universe, the less structure and constraints they find there is to live their own lives.

And so the countdown to death is imbued with a responsibility: to make the most out of your own existence. What do you make the most out of? That’s another discussion. For now, it is sufficient to say it is whatever you deem to be valuable.

All valuable things take time. Without the awareness of death and the urgency that comes with it, we are doomed to waste our lives.

Distractions from the awareness of death

The 8 hours countdown took quite a bit of time to warm up and cool down as well. To realize the truth written in this essay, it took me 25 years. So that’s 2.5 hours gone.

The remaining time is also subjected to multiple time sinks I cannot escape.

Sleep took away one third of my life, then there is disease and illness, time to commute, time to fall in and out of love. All those I do not regret.

The remaining part, however, is plagued with distractions against the awareness of death.

The modern world is full of such distractions. Today, social media is the number one culprit, taking advantage of our biochemistry and reducing our lives to that of mindless automatons.

Dopamine binges stole away months of my life. Years even? I will never know. Those empty hours are no longer part of my life, they are gone.

Human and animals

Animals are dictated by their biochemistry too. Hormonal ebb and flows are what drive them. There is no plan nor urgency in their action. Their whole life is a distraction from death.

Many humans ended up no more than mere animals their entire life. Most humans become more humanly as they get older, as death becomes noticably tangible. Yet ironically it is around this time that so much time has been wasted, and regrets set in.

The tiny sparkle of life runs out quick. And people, including myself, are constantly distracted from this fundamental awareness.

Escaping the biochemistry traps

There are occasional moments of clarity, where my human thoughts prevail, and the awareness of death gets a hold of my attention.

Meditation prolonged this, and writing this down makes it crystal clear. I hope through publishing this online, the awareness takes root and spreads amongst its readers too.

In those moments of clarity, I also realize that escaping my biochemistry is impossible, while taming and wielding it to my own advantage is possible, though not trivial.

Fortunately, a modern human has unprecedented power to do so. Years of neuro-biochemistry research provided knowledge and tools. And to wield tools is the power of human.

Meaning of life

What is the meaning of life? There is likely none.

Each of us who care enough made one up and ran away with it.

We have been doing so throughout the history of humankind, and will be doing so until our ascension to anotherkind.

Until then, I wish you and me both: the constant awareness of our death, a clarity of mind to reign in and tame our animals within, and eventually a meaningful life lived to our own accord.