If I am just a bag of meat, sitting on a rock in outer space…

I recently came across this quote on The Oatmeal in regards to religion:

Does [your religion] help you cope with the fact that you are a bag of meat sitting on a rock in outer space and that someday you will DIE and you are completely powerless, helpless, and insignificant in the wake of this beautiful cosmic shitstorm we call existence?

Me: No! Because I don’t have a religion! (You will not hear me speak much of religion; in short I am open-minded, but believe in logic and reason first.)

AND YET…

Bizarrely, I did take solace in the fact that I AM only a bag of meat on a rock in the vast expanse of all known universes here, now, and ever, and that one day I will return to the earth as nothing more than dirt in the wind, or a miniscule grain of sand.

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

Incidentally, here is what sand looks like under 250x magnification.

That makes all of our problems seem insignificant too, doesn’t it? If all my life and experiences– the good and the bad, the love and the loathing, the pleasures, the worries, the joys and the pains– will all one day fit a hundred times over into the crevice of somebody’s left shoe, or in the space between their toes, why should I let any one pea-sized, fleeting problem command any semblance of significance over me?

So I am lost and lacking direction. Only until I find my way.

I’m not yet published. But I will be.

Today my body aches. Tomorrow it shall be mended.

I have no cherished love. But I shall love again.

This, that, and all the bricks I bear on my back are heavy. But soon they shall be gone.

Everything in life is for now, for now, for now; tomorrow, we are gone.

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