As our school year comes to a close, it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed by everything: finals, uncertainty about the future, questions about who we are becoming.
At this moment, standing at the edge of one chapter and the beginning of another naturally pushes us to reflect. It can feel heavy and even discouraging at times.
But it is also one of the most human moments we can experience: a pause to consider growth, meaning, and what comes next. In that spirit, it is worth asking a larger question, not just about our semester, but about our place in the world itself.
Meaning Is What We Make It
New Year’s Day is a celebration of our Earth, completing one trip around the Sun. This has no cosmological significance whatsoever. Even the slightly more cosmologically interesting Lunar New Year is not all that interesting.
The universe does not care what date it is, yet millions of people celebrate it deeply every year. It is those people who give the day meaning. They bring meaning to a meaningless event. It reflects our passion for growth, renewal, and hope. This is the most human thing imaginable.
The Improbability and Value of Being Here
The odds of your existing are about 1 in 10 2,685,000. That’s 10 with 2,685,000 zeroes after it. For comparison, the number of atoms in the known universe is about 1080. The odds of conscious life existing may be even smaller. Yet here you are. Hello!
The James Webb Telescope can see galaxies over 13.5 billion light years away. That means that what it sees is 13.5 billion years old and came into being just after the big bang.
With all this statistical probability against you, you still found your way here. Not only that, but you’ve found your way here with the knowledge of what you are and what you have done. Despite the size of the universe, nothing has the perceptive qualities you have.
Nothing has the ability to imagine beautiful images like you can. We may be the rarest thing in the known universe.
We often speak cheaply of human beings. But a person is not cheap. A person contains memories, grief, humor, possibility, and inner worlds. A mountain is larger than a person but cannot wonder. A star is brighter than a person but cannot love. In terms of our value, we are gods.
Hope Through Choice and Kindness
We will never live in a utopia, but we can get a lot closer than you’d ever think. Every moment is a choice towards kindness. Kindness is a yell into the void and in the face of all existence, saying that it doesn’t matter if we last a billion years more or 100, we were here.
Every choice of kindness is a moment when it exists in a universe where it certainly didn’t have to. Kindness isn’t just punk rock; it’s rebellious and defiant.
It’s easy to hate, it’s easy to choose cruelty. It’s hard to love, and it’s hard to love those who hate. If there’s humans, there’s hope, there’s people trying to make things better.
I hope that barista does have a great day, I hope that stranger walking opposite me down the street does feel validated in their humanity by my nod. I hope they know if they had tripped and fallen in that moment, I would have helped them up.
I don’t have to know you to love you. In fact, I don’t know you and I do love you. I’ve heard rumblings of some hippie saying similar things about two thousand years ago, but I don’t know much about that. I’ve heard he had a funny smell.
So instead take it from yours truly, a preacher who does in fact not smell. Though some friends may disagree with that.
Yell back at the person who yells at you, but yell back where they err, and what truths you see. I’m not saying some bullies don’t deserve a kick in the pecker every now and then. But once they’ve iced their pecker, and calmed their nervous system, they may have some questions, and I’m saying you should offer some answers.
Meaning, Progress, and Human Potential
Some people fear life has no inherent meaning. They are correct. But that is freedom. If meaning isn’t assigned, then it can be authored. We create art, family, traditions, causes, goals, and identities.
Meaning and “why’s” are everywhere for those willing to notice them. Our first wonderings gave us tools and fire; our recent wonderings gave us rockets and medicine. The blank page becomes beautiful once you realize you hold the pen.
In the year I was born (2003), there were about 9 million infant mortalities globally. In 2024, that number was reduced by nearly 60%. Now, there are still far too many children under the age of five dying every year, but in my lifetime, we have seen dramatic improvement.
It is hard to see these kinds of changes in our world, and we have so far to go, but we must acknowledge these real improvements. Cynicism about our world ignores our true history and doesn’t let us enjoy the fact that millions of people who would have once died as infants now live with us.
Diseases that were once fatal are now manageable. We continue to explore the stars, and even just recently with the Artemis II mission, for a moment as those astronauts circled the moon; all of humanity was together.
Didn’t it feel nice to think about what that meant for us? Though incomplete, progress is real. We can take steps towards our utopia.
We live surrounded by miracles and call them normal. Microchips are built through absurdly precise engineering. Phones contain power that ancient kings dreamed of. Technology on our doorstep promises to change our world even further.
AI can help to accelerate medical research; quantum computing may solve problems faster than we can generate them; fusion energy could transform our civilizations’ energy use. We are so used to these miracles but complain when they buffer.
We Are Not Doomed to Be Cruel
We often speak as if cruelty is fixed in human nature. Dr. Robert Sapolsky documented baboon groups in east Africa for over two decades. He found one particular group of these primates to be a great proof for us, their not-so-distant cousins.
The group once took a meal of leftover meats from a safari, unbeknownst to them this meat was infected with Tuberculosis.
The aggressive baboons that forced their way to the front to get the lion’s share of the meat all died, leaving only the gentler baboons alive. Dr. Sapolsky found that this group began to show increasingly positive signs of stress and anxiety reduction. The group became less violent, more peaceful, and healthier.
As new aggressive baboons tried to join the group, they were outcasted until they adapted to the group’s gentler ways.
Dr. Sapolsky witnessed undeniable proof that widespread sociological change can happen in primates, and it can happen within a generation. We are not doomed to be awful. Better systems create better people.
If human beings hold this much value, we should be careful declaring anyone beyond saving. We must oppose the extinguishing of human life in any context, because irredeemability is a dangerous concept. Once people become disposable, dignity becomes fragile for everyone.
Our generation may be described as doomed. Perhaps we are anxious. Fine. But we are also creative, emotionally literate, funny, connected, and hungry for fairness. Every generation gets its turn, as will we.
What It Means to Be Here
There is evil in this world, but evil is not all there is. Nature itself may be indifferent, but not malicious. We can introduce compassion into that indifference. If there are humans, there is hope. If there are humans, there are still people trying to make things better. Against all odds, we are here. We are the universe learning how to care.