Importance

Jenny T’s comment on my last post about how people with their cell phones think they are super important and have to answer them wherever they are got me thinking.

We all believe that we’re important, special snowflakes in this life. We’re told we are. We’re all unique, and extraordinary, just like our fingerprints.

My son was just born, which was extremely significant for me. It was a milestone in my life. Was it really all that important though in the cosmic scheme of things? Not really. It happens all the time, everywhere. The planets kept spinning, the universe kept expanding. Just like when we die. Life keeps going. The universe doesn’t care.

What I do, doesn’t mean anything.

A scary, yet liberating thought.

A “fuck-it” attitude, if you will.

I had to take a sociology class in college to fulfill my ethnic studies requirement. I really didn’t want to, but the teacher was really good, and we had to read his book about homeless people in Chicago who he studied over the course of several years. He said they ended up having a “fuck-it” attitude towards life because they had been dealt such a difficult hand, and were having trouble coping with life. They knew their actions didn’t mean anything in the scheme of the city they lived in, so they did whatever.

As a middle class citizen I think I’m about 50% “fuck-it” and 50% still worrying about what I do and what I accomplish. Maybe 25%, 75%, but that’s just semantics.

Should I get more tattoos: Fuck-it, why not?

Should I have a baby at 24 when most people now are waiting till they are in their late 20’s or early 30’s: Fuck-it, why not?

I’ll enrich my now because the universe around me doesn’t give a fuck if I’m here, or not.