©Leslie Plaza Johnson
There comes a moment--often inconvenient, usually unbidden--when one realizes that, for all our aspirations, convictions, and high-minded philosophies, we are but unwitting actors in a grand theater piece directed by natural selection. No script, no rehearsal, merely instinct-driven improvisation in service of an indifferent directive: the perpetuation of our species.
Self-preservation? A necessary function to keep us alive long enough to replicate. The pursuit of happiness? A neurological carrot on a stick, coaxing us toward behaviors that enhance survival. Even love, that most sacred of human experiences, is--at its core--an elegantly disguised strategy for ensuring the continuation of our genetic lineage. We are biological marionettes, animated by forces older than reason, yet mostly unaware of the strings.
To recognize this is not, unfortunately, to transcend it. There is no unplugging from this matrix, no act of defiance that rewrites the fundamental terms of our existence. The realization brings no real comfort--only a quiet chagrin, a rueful acknowledgment that even our loftiest ambitions may be little more than sophisticated echoes of ancient imperatives.
And so, we chase happiness with the fervor of a dog chasing its tail, spinning ourselves into exhaustion in pursuit of a satisfaction that remains just out of reach. We jump from job to job, city to city, relationship to relationship, convinced that the next thing will be the thing that finally settles us. We fill our days with distractions--new hobbies, self-improvement regimens, the latest wellness trend--not because we know where we're going, but because the momentum itself keeps the deeper questions at bay.
And when, in rare moments of stillness, a nagging sense of misalignment creeps in, we silence it as quickly as possible. We turn up the volume, fill the silence with noise, anything to avoid the uneasy recognition that we are not entirely at home in our own lives. Better to scroll, to binge, to busy ourselves, than to sit too long with the uncomfortable question of whether we are living in accordance with any truth deeper than mere inertia.
But perhaps there is something oddly liberating in recognizing that nothing--at least in any cosmic sense--has meaning. That meaning is not an inherent feature of the universe, but a construct we invent so that we might feel oriented, so that we might not be crushed beneath the weight of sheer randomness. And if that's the case, then we are also free--free to let go of rigid, unhelpful, even damaging creeds. Free to release the ideas that no longer serve us. Free to stop performing obligations we never truly chose.
Instead of grasping for some ultimate purpose, perhaps we move forward--not in a straight line toward some imagined finality, but in the way that rivers carve their courses, winding, adapting, taking unexpected turns. Life is not a goal to be reached but a project always in progress, shaped by detours, surprises, and the simple fact that the present is all we ever truly have.
So, let us make of this project what we can. Let us love with the full knowledge that loss is inevitable. Let us create, knowing that all things will fade. Let us care for one another, even in the face of futility. Let us be generous when it serves no evolutionary purpose, let us forgive when resentment would be the more natural course. Even something as small as yielding to another in traffic--a trivial kindness, a momentary rejection of the self-serving impulse--can serve as our quiet rebellion against the indifferent mechanisms that shaped us.
To be sanguine in this muddle is not to pretend that everything will turn out fine, but to make room for small astonishments in the midst of uncertainty. It is to pause on a walk--not for the sake of mindfulness, exactly, but simply because the late afternoon light has turned an ordinary patch of weeds into a glowing field of gold. It is to laugh--really laugh--when the soufflé collapses or the dog throws up on the rug or a whole carefully laid plan falls spectacularly apart. It is to understand that no grand resolution is waiting for us at the end, but to trust that this--this winding path, this fleeting sweetness, this strange, sorrowful, beautiful muddle is enough.
And though the world may remain indifferent to our efforts, we can still find genuine solace in the moments when we make each other's burdens lighter--a shared laugh in the waiting room of bad news, a spontaneous offer of help without expectation of return, the simple beauty of working side by side in a garden. There is no grand resolution waiting for us at the end, no final act where everything makes sense. There is only the movement itself, the winding path, the project of being here, together--muddled, yes, but buoyed by the small, luminous ways we remind one another that none of us has to find our way alone.