So I’ve updated my blog title. It was “The Byrd’s Nest” for a long time (years at the time of this post, I believe). However it was more of a not-incredibly-inspired name I came up with for the sake of my blog having a title.
Those who’ve been following this blog probably know of the things that have been affecting my life as of late. Feelings of doubt and despair in the meaning of life itself. Indeed, if life really does have any meaning at all, or if we are all simply products of chance and our lives hold no inherent value. That there’s no reason we’re here. That really, we’re just nothing consequential.
I suppose to those who have been atheist or agnostic all their lives could take that kind of possibility with a lighter heart than someone who has always believed in something or Someone(s). Even before I became Catholic, when I completely hated going to Church with my mom and didn’t believe in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, I always held the belief that there was something beyond this plane of existence. It wasn’t something I chose to believe – it was something that simply WAS, at least for me.
Being a lady of science though, for the most part I like seeing evidence for the existence of things. Things like mathematical proofs and inference and results from experiments that back hypotheses are things that fascinate me. The ability of human ingenuity to reason, think and discover is exciting and invaluable.
However, this has pitted the two inextricable parts of my psyche – my spiritual side and my scientific side – against each other in a brutal dogfight that, lately, has left me in constant torment when coupled with the re-emergence of my thanatophobia.
This is what has gone into the new name of this blog. Because I so desperately want to mean something, as a person, that is valuable beyond this mortal coil. Something beyond being within my grandchildren’s fading memories, which will wink out of existence when they themselves pass on.
Something consequential.
There might be no reason we’re here, but I figure that in 5 billion years, the sun will blow up and we’ll all be gone anyway.
But in my mind, since I don’t believe in an after life, this is the one life I get to live. Which is all the more reason to make it count. To enjoy it, to do good things, to help people and to take risks. (Which is not to say theists don’t cherish their lives.)
I think I’m alright with the idea of dying and not being remembered 100 years from now. I think mainly because I’ll be dirt or have no consciousness.