May 9, 2007

• What the hell are quarks made of?

  Instead of laboriously pouring through the text of my Organic Chemistry book like a good little college student, I've been pondering the nature of the universe.  A few months ago I saw a program that discussed the theory that all the objects and matter in the universe are moving toward each other at a slowly increasing speed.  A little, ugly man with glasses explained that after triangulating the position of hundreds of star deaths and then measuring the speed with which the light sources were moving with respect to us over several years, it has become apparant that, in fact, everything is not moving toward a center point of the universe and is actually moving away with an increasing speed.

  What does this mean for you, you might ask.  Well, nothing, so don't worry.  What it does mean is that eventually, after billions and billions and trillions and trillions of years, all matter will have pulled apart into its most basic components and the universe will be filled with so much empty space between quarks that it will effectively contain "nothingness" infinitely.  What is does mean is that everything that has ever happened, your birth, your death, the formation of all the planets, the formation of all the stars, the very beginning of the universe, will mean nothing.  Everything will be nothing.

  Now, when I was thinking about this to myself, snuggled under my Napoleon Dynamite comforter and cuddling my little stuffed kitty, it seemed a bit depressing that some day, a bazillion jillion years from now all of my parts, all of the atoms that once made up my body would be pulled apart into quarks and perhaps even further into pure energy and spread as far as possible until they were effectively nothing.  I thought to myself, is any of this that I am doing, any of this struggling or worrying or working hard really worth it?  Then I had a completely different, more upbeat thought.

  Perhaps, somewhere deep within our minds, the information that one day we will be nothing and all the things that we did, all the children we produced, and all the people's lives that we influenced will eventually be nothing also.  Perhaps that little shread of something so much bigger than ourselves pushes us not to waste our lives, pushes us to be happy, to make others happy and to do the best with our time that we can.  Maybe the true source of our drive to do well for ourselves is actually the knowledge that it won't matter.  If it won't matter to anyone else or anything else except for people and things existing in the few years after your existence has ended, then why try so hard?  Because it will still matter to you and the reason that it matters is because you realize that if it doesn't matter to you then there is no one left to care.  If you don't realize this and you depend on other people who are going through this same thought process, whether they know it or not, to support you, then you will end up a drug addicted loser homeless in the street, blaming your failure on everyone but yourself.  Everyone must accept responsibility for their own actions, because no one can make you do anything.  They can do things to you, but they can't make you do things.

  I guess, in summary, this morning I was just thinking about how much people depend on one another for help and support and I decided that you can be the most help to others and make them happiest if you depend on yourself and have an internal strength on which you can rest when things get rough.  If you believe in yourself and live every day for yourself, then your confidence and joy for yourself will allow you to make others happy that much more.  Without understanding how to love and care for yourself, how can you expect to love and care for someone else?  Without the basic knowledge of what makes you happy, how can you hope to fathom what makes others happy?  That's all I'm saying.

  Anyway, I think maybe I'm still not sure what makes me happy and I think that maybe until I figure it out, I can't really, truly make anyone else happy.  I'll work on it though.  Whoever thinks understanding Organic Chemistry or Differential Equations is harder than understanding your own mind has obviously never met me.

  • 4:32 pm
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