fear and love

Nothing matters.  This is not how I feel, it's just the truth.  We can all agree on this, right?  I mean, I literally can't even fathom how it would be disputable.  The universe is vast and absolutely entirely indifferent.

Life is an amazing process that occurs when the right elements all exist on the same planet.  This "goldilocks zone" may turn out to be more wide or narrow than currently believed, but life will occupy that space as long as it can.  Countless cycles of not only individual deaths, but the deaths of entire species.  All species eventually die.  The planet eventually dies, probably even for reasons well before the sun goes, and then eventually maybe the entire universe.

We're talking about unimaginably vast scales of time and space, but this also means all the more time and space for other goldilocks zones, where life flourishes for a while before flickering out of existence once again.  Of course, all sorts of things move me anyhow, I'm human, but still.  It is what it is.

"It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is - and so are we.  For a little while." 

~George Carlin, at the end of a bit that was honestly hard to watch.  He's merciless about mocking people for caring about stuff.  As if "bourgeoisie white liberals" means anything on a cosmic scale, either, but ok.  I prefer this auto-tune of how he ends the bit.

Bill Hicks, I'm less familiar with.  This choice we have "between fear and love," isn't much of a choice, even on it's face.  If one lacks the sense of self-worth that is typical of depression, I might wonder, what good am I to anyone else?  Honestly, depressed people are downers, we're lazy, we're negative, often we're not even nice.

I also need to break down the term "self worth," here.  It's not abstract, but literally, how much am I "worth" - to others?  It's right in the terms we use, when we talk about how much we "value" ourselves.

Value and worth are transactional terms, a process that goes on between people.  More intrinsic being our assessment of that.  This is simply having self awareness and consideration for others - before any number of neuroses take over.  Sometimes it can be a difficult equation.  I don't know what the hell people want.  They don't always make a whole lot of sense.

Doesn't matter whether I care about others, if acting on that means mostly keeping to myself, either way.  The thing is, it's an assessment that isn't necessarily wrong, and that's not depression, so much as just kinda depressing.

When we want to trade or purchase anything, there are multiple values at play.  How much can I actually get for this?  How much will it cost me to lose?  How much do I think it's objectively worth?  These concepts are all interconnected, like different axis of a graph, at the center of which one might find some vague notion of self esteem.  A complex process bouncing between internal and external circumstance, leaving very little room for much choice.

The world more broadly though, sure.  The universe is pretty awesome.