In my experience, there are a number of themes in the thinking of people who are intensely preoccupied by existential issues and questions. One common theme which people can find their mind gets stuck on, and about which they are unable to reason their way to an answer, is the idea that, in the long run, our life counts for very little, if anything at all. 

Ruminating on this thought can leave people feeling profoundly hopeless that they will ever be able to find a meaning or purpose to living. If we are inevitably going to die, only to be remembered by people who will themselves then die, what is the point in all of this? Being optimistic, the longest we might hope for there to be any trace at all that we were ever even here on earth is probably about 150 years.

And so there it is. We are all destined to be forgotten. We can’t sugar coat this. It’s an uncomfortable thought and not one that many hours of thinking about will do anything to change. 

In his book, 4000 weeks, Oliver Burkeman calls this out and believes the solution to this preoccupation is ‘cosmic insignificance therapy’. He believes that truly accepting our utter insignificance in the bigger picture takes the pressure off us feeling like we ‘have to make a difference’ or ‘do something with our life that truly matters’. He thinks that grasping our insignificance is liberating, allowing us to take more risks and making it easier to make decisions because, whatever we decide, from the universe’s perspective, it really doesn’t matter. 

And in principle I would agree with this. If you can accept this fundamental truth, it is a relief. It’s not easy though for someone who is obsessively ruminating on these thoughts. Their brain is likely desperately clutching at straws, crunching away at all hours of the day and night like some super-computer, trying to come up with an algorithm or formula which will tell them that, yes, their life does have significance, both now and forever. Amen. 

For these people, and indeed for anyone who has ever wondered about the significance or relevance of their life, might there be some comfort in the idea that there is perhaps a flipside to this idea of our cosmic insignificance. 

As so often seems to be the case, in every idea there is the counter idea. Indeed the law of polarity states that everything in the universe contains the seeds of its opposite. Everything has duality – if one side of anything can exist, the opposite expression must also be able to exist. Like a coin with two sides, one cannot exist without the other. 

Therefore you can’t have black without white, birth without death, light without dark, happy without sad. We only know what health is because we also know about illness. We understand what it means for it to be night time because we have also experienced the day.

This is the essence of Yin and Yang in Chinese philosophy – opposite but interconnected and mutually perpetuating forces. The law of polarity applies to abstract concepts and ideas too. And so if every idea has it’s opposite what is the yang to the yin of ‘cosmic insignificance’? 

Perhaps it is that, whilst on the one hand being utterly insignificant, on the other hand our lives are simultaneously and profoundly significant in ways that we can’t even comprehend. Whether it is at an organisational, social, academic, familial, even molecular level, you could argue that every human life has significance. The ripple effect of our comments and actions, or even inactions, means that the impact we have on the lives of others, on our environment and on the universe more generally, even if it is in some infinitesimally small way, is incalculable. 

This is a key idea in Buddhism - that all beings, rather than existing independently, exist in relation to other beings and to the universe around them. Any human life will forever be significant in that, if it hadn’t have happened, the universe would forever be different for not having had that life in it. 

The relationships I have, the work that I do, the things I create – everything has an impact and leaves a trail. Even the atoms that make up my body go back into the earth and nourish plants that grow and continue the circle of life. We understand our true significance though an appreciation of our interconnectedness with humanity, and the universe more widely. 

It might therefore be conceived that our lives actually have way more significance than we can possibly comprehend, because everything in the universe is interconnected in an infinitely complex way. 

So for those who struggle with these questions around the point of it all, maybe it’s not about coming to terms with our cosmic insignificance. Rather it’s being able to hold in mind, at the same time, both the smallness and insignificance of our individual human life and yet also our significance and connectedness to the most basic elements of the universe in the most profound way.