Well, yes, when our brains and bodies cease functioning ‘our’ universe (what extraordinarily little we’ve known of it) dies with us. By no means does that make the years that we’re here pointless or lonely (terrifying, yes, but not all terrible). You seem to feel that only a god-given destiny of some kind gives meaning to life but that’s not tenable. Even we have obscenely limited power in determining the ‘meaning’ of our lives, much less any type of overarching, universal meaning. It may have been (but probably wasn’t) Bertrand Russell who said that we have to accept that the world is a horrible, horrible place before we can be happy.

I’m quite proud of my cynicism, really. It’s ingrained in us, I think, in our gray and white matter as ‘self-preservation’ and likely helps in our selection of mates (amongst a host of other primal — and not-so-primal — decisions).

Of course you have something to offer others! You made me think, you made me write; you offered those same chances (pun) to thousands of others. Pretty phenomenal, yes?

I swear I’ll not resort to the banal.

We are evolutionary creatures. And completely and wholly random. Yet each different from one another — think Kinsey and his massive collection of millions of gall wasps. Each. One. Different. From. Others. We are constantly evolving. Human apes. If we procreate, we pass evolved mutated genetic material onto our offspring.

You want meaning? You really need others, I learned. As a hermit I only thought of the cruel hand I’d been dealt by chance. And the cruelty that I’d dealt festered and I believed myself to be the model for evil. I don’t know how I rid myself of agoraphobia — maybe placing one fear above another? — but I have found happiness in and with others again and I am, minute-by-minute, constructing a thesis that might explain why.

I think that meaning is a construction, too. Oh, I don’t believe in self-assigned meaning to any great degree! I think that others construct our meaning and it’s reflected back upon us, a gift (sometimes unwanted and unwarranted) given from other apes. If we have a conscience I think that we might practice kindness and evaluate the reflections that we receive.

If you’re capable of recording what you are, you’re capable of determining what you’d prefer to be. There’s no destiny guiding you and the impediments may be great but to escape the need for gods you can have the energy to construct your own “immortality project.” (Becker)