The Universe Doesn’t Give a **** About You!

I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but the universe really doesn’t care a **** about you.

It doesn’t care about your job, your bank balance, or the fact that Steve from Accounts got promoted ahead of you. It remains magnificently indifferent to all such concerns and, indeed, to most concerns in general. Entire stars explode with alarming regularity while I’m trying to remember where I left my reading glasses. The universe appears to regard these events as being of broadly equal insignificance.

Oddly enough, I find that rather comforting.

Many of us grow up with the idea that we’re here for a reason. Somewhere, hidden amongst the cosmic paperwork, there is supposedly a grand purpose waiting to be discovered. A destiny. A calling. Perhaps an ancient prophecy involving dramatic music, a glowing sword, and an unnecessarily complicated family tree.

As far as I can tell, this is nonsense.

You are not the chosen one.

Neither am I.

No great celestial bureaucrat sits above the clouds assigning each of us a special mission, a five-year plan, and an accompanying orchestral soundtrack. The universe has outsourced all personnel decisions and no longer answers correspondence.

The good news is that if there is no grand cosmic plan for your life, then you cannot possibly fail to achieve it.

You don’t have to become a billionaire (it’s trillionaires now – Ed) , a celebrity, a genius, or a historical footnote in order to justify your existence. You don’t need to leave a legacy, build an empire, or optimise your personal brand. Existing is not a performance review. There is no cosmic HR department quietly assessing your quarterly progress against strategic objectives.

You are here.

That is already enough.

Of course, this brings us neatly to money.

Now don’t get me wrong. Money is useful. Food, shelter, heating, books, bicycles, and the occasional cup of coffee all require money. The universe may be indifferent, but the electricity company certainly isn’t.

Beyond a certain point, however, our relationship with money starts becoming a little strange. Financial security is sensible. Accumulating enough wealth to buy a small island, three yachts, and a solid-gold toilet while still worrying that you don’t have enough begins to resemble a dragon sleeping on a pile of treasure. Alas even some people on the planet at the moment would give Smaug a run for his money!

At some point “more” stops meaning “enough” and starts meaning “because the spreadsheet said so”.

That seems a very poor use of our limited time.

Because time, not money, is the thing we’re actually running out of and no matter how much money you have… you cannot buy yourself more time.

Here’s the great paradox.

Cosmically speaking, we are insignificant. Ridiculously so. The observable universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. Against that backdrop, the entire history of human civilisation barely registers as a rounding error.

And yet there has never been another person exactly like you.

There never will be again.

The particular combination of memories, experiences, fears, hopes, talents, flaws, interests, favourite songs, terrible decisions, and peculiar habits that constitutes “you” has never existed before in the history of the universe. Every human being is both utterly insignificant and completely unique.

The universe may not care.

That doesn’t make you unimportant.

It simply means your importance exists at a different scale.

People spend an extraordinary amount of effort dividing themselves into tribes. Wealth. Religion. Nationality. Politics. Class. Social status. Favourite operating systems. Human beings seem unable to resist inventing categories and then arguing about them.

Underneath all of that, however, we’re remarkably similar.

We’re all temporary.

We’re all fragile.

We’re all making it up as we go along.

We’re all trying to get through the week with some combination of dignity, optimism, caffeine, and luck.

The labels we use to separate ourselves are often far less interesting than the things we share.

Eventually every one of us will be gone.

The kings.

The billionaires. (Ahem trillionaires I said! – Ed)

The influencers.

The politicians.

The people who spend all day arguing with strangers on the internet and who make “spreading hatred and misery” their mission.

Especially them.

One day the universe will forget every empire, every nation, every corporation, every social media platform, and every argument ever conducted online. Given enough time, all the works of mankind will vanish without trace. Even this great magnus opus you’re reading now will vanish (not a bad thing if you ask me – Ed)

And honestly?

That’s fine.

I don’t find that depressing.

I find it liberating.

If our time here is brief and the universe has no grand plan for us, then we’re free to decide for ourselves what matters. We can learn interesting things. We can read good books. We can listen to great music. We can collect ridiculous objects. We can fall in love. We can build friendships. We can help one another where we can and, as a general rule, try not to make somebody else’s brief existence more difficult than it needs to be.

We are all mayflies on a small rock hurtling through an indifferent cosmos.

We may as well make the experience pleasant.

So make the tea.

Take the walk.

Read the book.

Listen to the music.

Buy the absurd thing if it genuinely delights you and doesn’t bankrupt you.

Laugh often.

Be kind.

Learn things.

Share things.

Help people.

The universe doesn’t give a **** about you.

Which is precisely why we should give a damn about each other.