It’s easy to think about how completely and totally expendable we are as humans. We have no apparent purpose except to go around and live. Some of us are living the lives that they hoped to live and others are farther from it than they ever thought they’d be, but no matter the quality of life, the meaning is still just as superficial. We make the best of what we have and that’s all anyone can ever ask for, but it could end in any moment.

I’m sure you’ve heard about people who live every day like it’s their last, hell, there’s a Nickelback song about that, and that’s a scary thought to a lot (I’ll leave that up to interpretation). Why live each day like it’s your last? That seems to make everyday that’s not lived like that purposeless. I frequently take days to just relax and do what I want, and those are some of my favorite days, even if I don’t dedicate time to the gym or some shelter or whatever else may present itself. Even if the world ended right now, I would be okay with that (not that I would have much of a say about it anyway). Everyday that I have is pretty good, no matter if it’s me going through a depressive fit, laying in bed until 4 PM, the only motivator to get up being the need to pee, or spending my whole day working towards my most eccentric dreams. Today is good. Tomorrow is good. Yesterday was good. They’re all good, even when they’re not.

Scott McRambling

When I look at the stars, I feel completely and totally expendable. At any moment, I could die, hit by a car that I didn’t see, or worse yet, Earth could rupture from acts of God that no one ever expected. There could be meteors, supermassive volcanos or even extraterrestrial beings that conquer species for the fun of conquering.

Maybe a far away star will super nova and, while we watch from the comforts of Earth, another species that we’ve never seen or understood could vanish from existence, disappearing faster than a shooting star.

In the blink of an eye, we could just… cease; no longer existing in a traditional sense, but instead our atoms will become some cosmic dust that might help to create new life, or just drift around for billions of years until it forms into a new star.

If multiverse theory is correct, then in one of the universes, someone identical to me existed and died, turned to cosmic dust, then after hundreds of millions of years, the cosmic dust formed again and created an exact, identical copy of me. It could have been this universe for all we know. Maybe humans have existed in many times and forms, and this is just the most recent in a long line of evolutions.

For all we know, the universe isn’t anything like we have guessed so far. What if the universe that we know so well is inside of a black hole. Maybe black holes suck in all sorts of cosmic dust and spit it out on the other side, and another universe is created in the infinitely small mass in the center. What if we exist in a never-ending series of being sucked up by black holes until we get to wherever we are now. For all the times that scientists have questioned what physics exist inside of one of these mysterious objects, we might already know.

No matter how we exist or in what state, we don’t matter. We could be in a simulation that some greater species could shut down at any moment. We could be in a universe filled with species that are much smarter than humans can ever hope to become. We might even live in this universe, with no life other than what’s here on Earth, and no hope of predicting or avoiding our inevitable extinction.

Maybe tonight, after I’m comfortably in bed, dreaming of whatever comes to my mind, the world ends. That would be poetic. For all of the fear and anxiety that I get from that thought, it might be the most serene thing to happen to humanity; ending this current evolution like we’re nothing and trying again. Maybe I’ll make another me that has the same thoughts. No matter what theory pans out, my thoughts and actions will live on somewhere. I am just as infinite as the possibilities for extinction.