[Music] our ability unlike the other animals to conceptualize our own end creates tremendous psychic strains within us whether we like to admit it or not in each man's chest a tiny ferret of fear at this ultimate knowledge gnaws away at his ego and a sense of purpose we're fortunate in a way that our body and the fulfillment of its needs and functions play such an imperative role in our lives this physical shell creates a buffer between us and the mind paralyzing realization that only a few years of existence separate birth from death if man really
sat back and thought about his impending termination and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos he would surely go mad or succumb to a numbing sense of futility why he might ask himself should he bother to write a great symphony or strive to make a living or even to love another when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust moat whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives and this perspective who recognize that there is no purpose they can
comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate enemy but even for those who lack the sensitivity to more than vaguely comprehend their transients and their triviality this incorrect awareness robs life of meaning and purpose it's why the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation why so many of us find our lives as absent of meaning as our deaths the world's religions for all their parochialism did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache but as clergymen now pronounce
the death of god and to quote arnold again the sea of faith recedes around the world with a melancholy long with drawing roar man has no crutch left on which to lean and no hope however irrational to give purpose to his existence the shattering recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than i suspect even psychiatrists are aware if life is so purposeless do you feel it's worth living the very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning children of course begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder
a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf but as they grow older the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joy de vive their idealism and their assumption of immortality as a child matures he sees death and pain everywhere about him and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man but if he's reasonably strong and lucky he could emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life's ilan both because of and in spite of his
awareness of the meaninglessness of life he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation he may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining the most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death however mutable man may be able to make them our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment however
vast the darkness we must supply our own light [Music] you
