I need to get this off my chest

Neo-nihilism is a thing. It's a comforting idea and I hate it.

"I've been having this thought for a while now, and it's hard for me not to keep circling back to it. What if we could just not be concerned with emotions and focus on our thoughts instead?"

My friend looked at me. As if waiting for a response, but also satisfied that they have put this out there. 

I swallowed.

This thought had not landed well with me, and I was struggling to articulate why. 

My struggle was where this joy-less, grief-less, hyper-rational approach to life leads us. That's all I could say in response.

But that wasn't the totality of it.

I've thought more about it.

It's been needling away at me.

The thing that bothered me was what if the thought that dominates us actually squashes any likelihood of an emotional response at all?

What if the thought was, "fuck it, nothing matters anyway."

And what if our capability for dealing with our swirling emotions is so diminished that we like this thought because it means we just don't care enough to feel anything about anything? 

Because I think lots of people are right here, right now, thinking like this. 

Apparently, it's called neo-nihilism. 

Forget striving, performative excellence, and living your best life on social media. Because N-O-T-H-I-N-G-M-A-T-T-E-R-S, anyway. 

And hell, that's a soothing thought, isn't it? 

Why bother with masks, or vaccines, or getting up to go to work in the morning?

Because it's all so fucking pointless.

And that's what's been needling me.

Because I get it.

It can all seem trivial, useless and pathetic, this human experience of ours, to transcend the disorder and chaos of the universe and our petty lives.

In the grand scheme of things, we all return to atomic matter, so why bother?

I bother because though the chaos is sometimes overwhelming, I would rather I have it than not. 

I bother because I want colour in my life, not the hyper-rational grey world of thought alone. 

I bother because when we cope together to rejoice and experience positive emotions together, there’s nothing else like it

Because who would choose thought alone over a balanced life?

Not a life where we are ruled and made miserable by our emotions, driven to behave in ways that we later regret, or are made to regret by others. Yes, there is risk here, which we have seen in recent years, which is what, in retrospect, I think my friend was getting at.

But I mean a life where we see emotions for what they are.

Fleeting glimpses of what life means to us, good / bad / up /down/ rageful / regretful /resentful / grateful/ joyful / graceful  - and everything in between.

I reject the hyper-rational life. But I also reject the neo-nihilistic refrain that nothing matters. 

I matter.

You matter.

We matter.

What we do alone and together matters.

Joy matters.

Sadness matters.

We can cope.

We can thrive.

We can plummet.

And we can rise again.