Auntie SparkNotes: What Does It All Mean?!

Dear Auntie Sparknotes,

I was raised in a very Catholic household. While I never subscribed to my parents’ more conservative beliefs, I had always believed in God and an afterlife up until a few years ago. Believing in God made me happy and gave me hope. However, I started having serious doubts about my beliefs during my junior year of high school. Nothing major happened. I just started to think more critically, and the idea of a God or a Heaven began to seem less and less plausible. I wanted to keep believing, but it just didn’t make logical sense to me anymore.

It’s been two years since then, and I’m still feeling really lost. I no longer have a sense of higher purpose, and everything feels pointless now. I know that I should try to create my own meaning, but I don’t know how. I think about death constantly. I worry about how I’m never going to see my loved ones again after they die. I feel like nothing matters, so I don’t do anything at all.

I even tried going to a free counseling session at my college, but it was useless. The counsellor’s advice basically boiled down to, “Just try to be positive, and stop thinking about death.” Trust me, I would if I could.

I’m really feeling kind of hopeless at the moment. Is it possible to live a fulfilling life while simultaneously holding the belief that everything is pointless? How do I find meaning without a God?

Man, is that the saddest question Auntie SparkNotes has ever been asked. I mean, geez, kiddo; you might as well ask how a movie can be any good if there’s no post-credits scene after the story ends. Whether or not there’s bonus content, the two hours you spent enthralled by the movie still matters. And whether or not there’s life after death, the life you live before death still has meaning. Even before you began to entertain doubts about the existence of a god or a heaven, did you really, honestly believe that the entire purpose of life is just to get through it in order to see what comes next? I certainly hope not. Regardless of your religious beliefs, that’s no way to live.

So if you don’t believe in a god or an afterlife—or even if you’re simply not sure—then the takeaway from that is not that life itself is pointless. It’s that life is the point. I mean, if this is all we get—eighty revolutions around the sun, give or take, followed by a return to the nothingness from whence we came—then the time we spend together here on earth is the only thing that means anything, and we’d better make the best and the most of it. We’d better read all the books, pet all the dogs, watch all the sunsets; we’d better laugh and cry and kiss and argue and fall in love; we’d better plant trees and mentor children and otherwise do what we can to leave the world in decent shape for the humans who’ll make this journey after us.

Most especially, we’d better be good to each other, because there won’t be another chance.

And on this topic, I can’t do better than to refer you to the words of Ann Druyan, the widow of famous astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, written after her husband’s death. Neither Druyan nor Sagan believed in a god or an afterlife—but look how meaningful it was for them to live, and to love, knowing that this life is all there is:

“That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

Which brings us back to you, and the truth you must reckon with: everyone you know is going to die someday, and more to the point, they’ll die whether you worry about it or not. Your fretting will not extend the lives of those you love by a single minute—but it will distract you from the vitally important business of rejoicing in the miracle of being here with them. That’s why the best advice I can give you is to not just accept that life is finite, but embrace it. See the people you love, sweet pea. See them, and let them see you. Laugh with them, dance with them, spar with them, but above all, be present with them—and with yourself. Pet the dogs. Watch the sunsets. Read the books. And remind yourself as needed that while our destinies will always be uncertain, and while life may be a long road that ultimately ends in darkness, that’s all the more reason to take every last bit of joy you can get from your time in the sun.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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