Chapter 1: The True Meaning of Life
Do you want to know what the true meaning of life really is? Fine, I'll tell you.
Here is the truth that nobody wants to say out loud:
Life isn't some radiant journey towards a predestined place, some fairy tale where your choices magically all matter. It's a simple loop. Wake up, pretend you're happy, sleep, and dream. Repeating this until you rot. People nowadays cling to words such as 'dreams', 'aspiration' and 'purpose' as if chanting them will keep the darkness away, but deep down within us we all know that's what is waiting at the end. Absolute Nothingness. Just simple silence.
But please don't mistake me for some pessimist who enjoys wallowing in misery. Honestly, it irritates me as well. No, this isn't about pessimism; it's all about simple honesty. Look around you for a moment. Everyone is playing pretend. They laugh too loud, they smile too wide, and they whisper to themselves that they're special, that their lives mean something, and that they have value, but it's a lie.
Me? I can't lie to myself like that, like others. I can smile, I can laugh, and I can go through the motions just as they do… But I know it's all hollow. It never feels real. It's as if I'm stuck behind a glass wall, watching myself in 3rd person, watching a world I can't touch.
And maybe that is why I keep asking myself, 'Why am I still moving forward?' Why do I keep going on, breathing, playing along with this pointless script? Maybe I'm scared; could it be fear? Fear of the void? Fear of the day I finally stop? Or maybe it's something else, a cruel instinct buried so deep inside us it won't let us give up, no matter how much we want to.
We use excuses that people depend on us or that other people are going to be sad that we are gone.
Simply put, I think we just want to live.
But here is the irony of it all: I think the meaning of life is knowing there isn't one. Knowing the search is the curse itself. Some people spend their whole lives clawing away at an answer, praying their suffering will add up to something greater; maybe they just like doing what they want to do, not for an answer but for the process. But in the end it's just sand in the wind.
Simply forgotten.
Still, I believe there's a strange comfort in that, isn't there? If life has no meaning, then we're free to do anything. Create one even if it's fragile, even if it breaks. Maybe the point isn't to win the game in the first place; maybe it's just to keep playing, even when you know or don't know the ending.
And if there is something, someone, out there watching, pulling the strings, laughing at the way we all struggle. I say let them laugh. Let them curse me, break me and kill me a thousand times over.
I'll keep going forward. I'll keep fighting. Even if the meaning doesn't exist, I'll either find my own or create one.
Because stopping, that's the only real failure I'll acknowledge.