"What's chronic, repetitive or inflamed in your life?" - Danielle LaPorte

"Try not to over think everything." This short and sweet sentence is probably the best advice I've ever been given, and it's some of the only advice I can never seem to follow. So it lingers in my thoughts, subtly haunting me from day-to-day. But the advice itself is only a reminder of what's really getting at me.

What seems to be the biggest problem I face is an overwhelming feeling of futility. When I give reality any real thought I always end up with the same eerie, shrill feeling: none of this really amounts to much of anything. Not really. Steeped in convention and inherited values, I get the feeling that we are all just blindly, steadily marching toward oblivion with smiles more or less painted on our faces. I've convinced myself that this isn't the product of emotion but logic. It's reason that has led me to this conclusion, eagerly pushing me toward the edge of optimism (and indeed sanity if I can admit that) to a bird's eye view of the abyss that awaits everything and everyone anyone has ever valued. In the end, I ask myself, what is it all for?

I'm not religious. I see the value in faith - I was raised in a deeply religious family with pastors for grandparents, so I've seen that side of things - but it's just not my narcotic. I'm not convinced of eternal happiness or existence. When I think about the universe and (to the best of my ability) consider its scale and immensity, I can't help but realize just how fragile everything we know and value is. In the scheme of the universe we are less than inconsequential, and at any time some cataclysmic event could reduce all of the knowledge and history ever recorded since the beginning of time to dust. And calling what would be left of our existence dust is probably being generous - there's no guarantee that there would even be a trace left after such an event. Neil deGrasse Tyson says, "the universe doesn't care about us," and although he says this in a comedic and conversational tone, I doubt he finds the idea much more comfortable than anyone else who has given that truth any serious thought.

This sense of meaninglessness is not conducive to anything. I know that. I know that living life with the thought that everything is coming to an end sooner or later is, in itself, useless (I'm sure you can appreciate the irony in this by now). But that doesn't comfort me, and I'm not sure that it should. As a scientist, I probe the world in search for truth. And as far as I can see, it's true that we are on a collision course with another galaxy with plenty of asteroids and other space debris to encounter along the way. It's true that everything we've ever created from the Mona Lisa and the Prius to Central Michigan University and the friends we have there is hurling toward its place in the utter, inescapable chasm of nothingness that awaits.

This idea is was it chronic in my life. This is what I struggle with from day to day to say nothing of things far less existential such as finances and my research.