What is the meaning of life? Does my life matter? I have been devoured by these questions before. Now I am thinking if these questions could have been phrased better. If there is anything that I proud myself of having progressed in the past 16 years of education, is the revelation that the bigger issue is asking the right-sized questions, in the right direction. Less about jumping to solver mentality to whichever problem that has been thrown at you, by your teacher, by your boss, by life. It was during a course on computational complexity in senior year of university. It could be mathematically shown that there are problems that are unsolvable. If we list out all the problems in the world, we would not be able to solve all of them in any meaningful finite amount of time! Although this was in an algorithmic perspective, it insinuated a deeper message for me. The more sensible approach to life itself.

We should be careful in selecting the questions we wish to tackle in the limited time we are blessed with. This book got me thinking. It could be that “Do I matter?” is simply a poorly laid out question. A slippery slope that could suck the life out of our limited lives. Which agent’s “mattering” are we worrying about exactly? With the simple aid of a preposition the question becomes much more manageable, perhaps even more meaningful. “Do I matter to _____?”, “How could I matter to _____?” – my family, my community, humanity, all inhabitants of Earth? – the list goes on. It’s less anxious to start from here. Then why not start from here? “Do I matter to Nature?” may well be a question that will only haunt me. But even the slight adjustment in the question to “Do I matter to Earth’s nature?” will make me feel bigger than just a speck. Enabling a productive mindset of attack.

Does Nature’s indifference preclude human’s will to shape fate?

Both statements are made by David Starr Jordan.

1. Nature no respecter of persons.
2. For it is man after all, that survives, and it is the will of man that shapes the fates.

In chapter 8, Lulu Miller called the latter a lie. However, I didn’t think the two statements are at odds with each other. My interpretation of “Nature” does not entirely encompass “fate”. I don’t have the ability to prevent a black hole from approaching Earth. I cannot change the way Earth has been bestowed to the contemporary humanity. But I do have the ability to make an impact to where I would be one year from now. I believe that I have that ability.

One would have to be an advocate of determinism to provide the logical premise for fate being a subset of Nature. That willpower is a misleading figment. Everything from quarks to constellations are mere agents in the musical of the universe. Humans in the middle of that scale could make no impact to however near a future, nor the script written by the indifferent divine. Maybe with the advent of a super advanced civilization where they could predict all men’s next behaviors just as we could predict the motion of planets in vacuum, will I’ll thoroughly succumb to futility. At that point, maybe fate is just another element of Nature. Determinism may be true, but at least for now, there is no reason in our current level of science to believe it is. I can’t prevent death. But I can change tomorrow. Nature no respecter of persons. But it is the will of man that shapes the fates.