Etch #1915

What is the meaning of life?

I have found comfort in the idea that we are each present for a reason. Life has meaning when I consider...

"I am here to leave the world a better place than I found it"

In my short 27 years of life to date, I have observed the following likely path for my life – somewhere along the bell curve of human experience:

I am born to a family who raises me to adulthood. Through nurture, education and environment I am meant to gain skills and interests that I can provide to my friends, family and a career. I pursue a career to earn currency that allows me to support myself and those I care about. I continue to work and learn and give pieces of myself to the world until the world has found my contributions sufficient and I am departed from my physical body to an unknown afterlife.

Somewhere in between this rather colorless description, there are opportunities to make a life that does not simply persist out of necessity or duty but one that is worth living - one that brings satisfaction. To get day to day, from one challenge to the next, there must be sentiments and memories and interactions that help it all make sense. It requires meaning-making and integreation. This is storytelling.

All of life is storytelling. It's how we make meaning in an otherwise endless and overwhelming series of existential questions. Life without meaning does not only become meaningless, but it deeply painful. The human brain is capable of great depths of sadness and fear as it can similarly create beautiful and miraculous connections. Meaning-making is essential. So we tell stories to pass the time. We inscribe our memories and names into caves and street corners. We write volumes of history and scientific fact to encourage scaling of our existing systems by new storytellers. We make art to share with others - through visual, auditory and physical experience - the thoughts and feelings that our brain cannot transmit through speech or written word. Art allows for perhaps the most pure form of human storytelling - giving the creator a sense of release - and gifting a new experience to the world for their own interpretation and meaning-making.

Even our daily conversations with peers and the inner dialogue in our conscious are simply different ways to find meaning and fill space in a world that is increasingly complex and interconnected. Each decision, each thought, each share is another small, futile attempt to bring complete clarity to our existence. And yet we must continue. The alternative is too painful. So we will continue to converse, to create, to ponder and to reason with each aspect - large or small - of the world around us. For the benefit of our selves and also for future storytellers to have a bookmark to continue. And now we etch our thoughts on-chain to preserve meaning in a new format - to be shared infinitely and openly. To continue the depiction of the human experience in an interoperable and decentralized network of storytelling. To make the world a better place, we must find a way for our passions to align with a format of storytelling that can bring joy to those around us. Some bake bread, others care for the sick and elderly. Some teach, others distribute currency to those in need. Each decision is an opportunity to communicate, to ourselves and the world around us, what matters. To make a positive or negative impact. Some will be large, significant, acclaimed, and memorable. Others will be small, nuanced, intimate, and yet still meaningful. I am excited for the newest chapter of the human experience which is yet to be told, through tools not yet fully understood. And I hope that I, too, can find and contribute meaning to my acts on and off-chain. I hope that my words and actions can inspire future storytellers to create, and to share, and to etch that which has the ability to change the world for the better.

If I can enter the afterlife knowing that I left the world a better place than I found it, I will be content.