The Zero Point
Why the inevitability of this moment does not deny a meaningful life
“Hi Shiv,
If everything is inevitable, then does what I do actually matter?
When I make choices am I genuinely shaping my life, or am I just watching a script play out? If my actions are part of an unfolding that couldn’t have happened any other way, where does responsibility fit in? Where does effort fit in?
Sometimes this perspective feels freeing, but at other times it risks sliding into apathy. If things are going to happen as they will, why try? Why struggle, create, or even care? And yet, I can’t seem to stop caring. I still feel the weight of decisions and consequences.
So I guess my real question is: how do we live meaningfully if everything is inevitable?
I’d love to hear how you see this, because right now I feel caught between relief and confusion.”
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The intersection between relief and confusion is a good place to be in. It means your nervous system is deescalating its existential tension even as your mind and its mental models are thrown into chaos. Those patterns of conditioning, in which your nervous system has become habituated to react to everything the mind projects as reality, are gradually being decoupled.
It is the peace that surpasses understanding. For understanding comes from the mind - and you are seeing first hand that relief - that momentary peace - can arrive even in the midst of mental confusion. This defies the mind’s very premise as being the arbitrator of peace. So, cherish this feeling as paradoxical as it may seem. Such experiences are privileges and do not last very long. Sooner or later the mind regains its foothold and its sense of certainty. And then claims credit for the relief retroactively.
“If everything is inevitable then does what I do actually matter?”
The manner in which you have worded this question reveals multiple layers of misassumption embedded within it. This is not unique to you. It is how we all use language - unconsciously assuming that the way in which we speak about things is a description of the things in themselves - rather than our ideas about them.
I will begin by addressing these assumptions one by one - before responding to your larger question.
