Have you ever really considered the extremes of your own ego, or for that matter, have you ever even acknowledged its existence? The majority of people are so deluded in their own private world that the possibility of their own worthlessness has never even entered their head. Why do we think that our lives matter so much? Why are we so convinced that all of our efforts are working toward an ultimate goal that will provide meaning to our existence? We dedicate years of our time on this planet chasing after these fiscal goals, these benchmarks of social status put in place so we know when we’re winning, so we can measure ourselves against the bell curve of humanity. So when the day finally comes when we run out of road, we can say “I did better than most people.” That’s all we really strive for these days, isn’t it? That’s what passes for ambition: doing better than the average person. It doesn’t matter who the average person is, what they wanted from life, or what their opinions were. As long as we can confidently say that we’re better than them, we can die content.

This whole train of thought stemmed from the service industry jobs I’ve had in the past few years. I see all of my superiors working their asses off to make these restaurants and bars profitable, sacrificing their mental and physical health for what? To more adequately prepare for their own funeral? Constantly striving to please their customers, to make the lives of their clientele just a little easier to tolerate? It’s like we’re all apart of one giant ant farm, toiling our short little lives away, each of us carving a path that leads to nowhere, ending in an arbitrary spot, only to be erased in the blink of an eye.

Nobody wants to think about their own insignificance because we like the delusion. We like thinking that the things we do matter. We like to think that all the time we sacrifice to our educations and job stability amounts to something, that it benefits society as a whole. The truth is, it doesn’t. The truth is that society would be just fine without you. The truth is that if you died tomorrow, very few people would mourn you. To some, you would just be another picture in the obituaries. To others, you would simply be a statistic, and to most of the world, not even that. To most of the world, your death would be no more significant than the death of a common termite: a life form whose existence they weren’t even aware of, and therefore, could not possibly be bothered to care about.

I realize these things seem rather depressing in a suffocating-with-the-weight-of-your-own-unimportance kind of way, but these ideas will only have that effect if you allow them to. Accepting these things, as the self-evident facts that they are, can be the most freeing realization of your entire life. No pressure to succeed. No stress of arbitrary task deadlines. No anxiety to keep a job that you hate.  No incessant desire to please other people. Fuck other people. They don’t know any better than you do. Everyone is just taking their best guess, and hoping things go as planned. And if somebody tells you differently…tells you that they have an answer…feel free to smile and nod, and say “wow, that’s great”…but don’t believe a single word they say. Trust only yourself.