Searching for Meaninglessness
I recently read a wonderful little book called Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman. The book is a collection of forty short parable-like stories, each one an imaginative take on a possible afterlife. The book is well worth reading - go check it out.
One story in particular, “Angst,” has been on my mind a lot lately. In this version of the afterlife the dead awake as their true selves - colossal beings charged with upholding the very structure of the universe. This job is incredibly important. The very universe depends on doing the job to perfection, leading to a deep sense of angst among the celestial beings. Thankfully, every few hundred years the beings are granted a vacation, a chance to return to a small fragile body on Earth. Eagleman writes:
“The idea, on such vacations, is to capture small experiences. On the Earth, we care only about our immediate surroundings. We watch comedy movies. We drink alcohol and enjoy music. We form relationships, fight, break up, and start again. When we’re in a human body, we don’t care about universal collapse—instead, we care only about a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the caressing tones of a loved voice, joy, love, light, the orientation of a house plant, the shade of a paint stroke, the arrangement of hair.
“Those are good vacations that we take on Earth, replete with our little dramas and fusses. The mental relaxation is unspeakably precious to us. And when we’re forced to leave by the wearing out of those delicate little bodies, it is not uncommon to see us lying prostrate in the breeze of the solar winds, tools in hand, looking out into the cosmos, wet-eyed, searching for meaninglessness.”
I find this quite beautiful. I need meaninglessness.
