Note: This post contains some philosophical passages about religion and nihilism. Those are not, in any way, intended to convert, condemn or offend anyone, merely to show my personal view on it all. And mind you, I certainly do not know anything more about the way of the world than you do, so please take everything with a grain of salt. And if you want to chat with me about any of it, I’d love to.

A few months back I was talking to a girl at the birthday party of a friend of mine and, after conversing about making music and creativity in general for a while, she asked me whether I did any writing. I (awkwardly) answered something along the lines of:

“Yeah, just a little bit, though … I’ve started a blog¹, but there’s not a lot on there … Nothing that makes much sense …”

She looked at me with a chuckle, amused by my apparently quite noticeable embarassement, and proceeded to ask:

“Ha, okay. What then, does make sense to you?”

Now, this is a topic I have actually thought about quite bit, and I would have liked to say something terribly well thought-out and philosophical about it, but, alas, my conversational eloquency has suffered a lot since I graduated gymnasium² and went through my mandatory military service (or at least that’s how I excuse these things to myself), which led to me saying something stupid, like:

“Playing the piano, I guess?”

Yeah. I know.

So I thought I might as well write a post on reasonability, which would hopefully help in ordering my thoughts on things of this nature into some coherent picture again, after they’d been so violently jumbled about by worries about troop morale, combat exercises, and the incredible inexperience and incompetence on both my and my superior officers’ parts³.

Maybe I’d even find a smidge of wisdom or two that might be floating around in this still troubled mind of mine. Who knows.

Let’s see.

Now, I have great respect for religion and I agree with many of the basic notions of protestant christianity I grew up with, things like “love thy neighbor”, “thou shalt not murder”, “thou shalt not steal”, et cetera, which I percieve to be keystones of all that is good and right. But what I do not do anymore is believe in any higher power or purpose to life.

Stopping to believe⁴, losing the certainty that there will always be someone who has a plan for my life, losing the certainty that there is a sense to it all, losing the certainty that everything will be alright in the end, was quite frightening. It can feel quite lonely, and seems quite sad, to believe in nothing.

But, I have to say, it is extremely liberating. Because, like this, with there being no inherent sense, no plan, no order, to anything, we ourselves get to decide what the sense to our lives is for us. And this fact, knowing (or believing, I should say) that ultimately, nothing matters, except to ourselves, can relieve quite a lot of pressure and anxiety⁵.

Which leads me to the original question: “What does make sense to me?”

Or, maybe more precisely: “What makes sense of me?”

It’s a tough one. I once thought I knew, and I think I did know once. I think I could’ve expressed all of it in a single sentence, but right now, I feel like I know nothing anymore, like whenever I look into my heart, nothing but a silently malicious black hole stares back at me, grinning and waiting to devour the next emotion that might have the audacity to start growing in there. Sometimes I even have a hard time telling right from wrong, and that scares me. A lot.

But I’ll try to write an answer. Right now. I think it will do me good.

falling in love

helping a friend in need

helping a stranger in need

marvelling at the beauty of a late summer sunset

bonfire conversations beneath a starry sky

sitting inside during a thunderstorm, a cup of tea and a good book in hand

learning something new and exciting about the world

teaching someone curious about the world exciting things about it

creating something that makes someone else’s life better

making music

listening to music

Those were more than one answer. But I’ll take it. Because I think what it all boils down to, eventually, is something along the lines of this:

“I want to do the things I love doing, be with the people I love being with and I want to leave the world with just a little bit more good in it than there was before I happened to come along.”

That is the sense I make.

---

Phew. That was something. Terribly sorry for the lack of direction and the tough topic, but this was one that just had to get out. And I think most of it did. Not all of it, but most of it. And that is enough.