Why Do

Whatever pleasure or pain we experience is effaced by our eventual exile from existence. 

So why do we care? Why do we struggle and suffer, marching onward through the days to a tempo set by worry? Why do we allow indecision to plague us, believing falsely that one choice is better than the next? Our lives are but a brusque and hurried hello. 

We do it to distract ourselves from our mortality. To briefly escape the grim veracity of that one and only truth. This distraction becomes life. We go on living an elaborate fabrication that denies its ineluctable end: our death. We plan for the years ahead; retirement; assuming the years will come. Always remembering to forget that in an instant, a moment too minuscule to mention, we can be undone. It is madness. To count upon survival through millions upon millions of these moments is madness.

But to ruminate on this too is madness. 

Consider the simple act of driving. If one really reflected upon the inherent risk involved, driving would become impossible. Barreling down highways at vulnerable velocities, around blind turns, mere inches from other cars also traveling at breakneck speeds, knowing some of them are texting; some are old, their vision fading; some drunk or tired, or both. Don't even think about it when it rains. To constantly meditate on one's mortality produces a paralyzing paroxysm of fear.

So we distract. 

As a result, civilizations have been raised; Gods. Wars waged; cities razed. Modern medicine; something at which to marvel. Technologies, and sciences. Arts. Happiness.

Merrily. Merrily we row our boats.

Life is but a dream.