I had a strange sensation while driving the other day that the world outside the windshield was not real, but a projection like a movie on a screen, or a dream, and that if I crashed into something there would be no real consequences. I also felt like I should be able to skip or fast-forward through this part of the movie, because it was pretty boring. The feeling passed, but I wonder if anyone knows what I am talking about.
When I think about dying, I sometimes feel a sense of vertigo and pointlessness that reminds me of adolescence, when I (like many people) would think about how I am just a tiny speck in the vast sea of space, inhabiting an infinitesimal eyeblink of time. Given that everything on earth will eventually die, what does anything matter?
But it does matter, I believe. It's just a matter of viewing things at the right scale. Not too big, not too small, not too far into the future. At the scale of human beings and our lives, joy and pain do matter. Choices that lead to one or the other, for ourselves or others, are real and important. Maybe that's obvious, but when you're facing mortality, it's good to be reminded.
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