Years may go by

We’re always inclined to label the world as continuous. We build logic and causality, trying to find a “reasonable,” “stable” timeline in memory. And yet, what’s truly worth remembering is so often the sudden, the senseless event. A string of accidental occurrences happens to assemble into something called “me,” which only deepens the confusion: why me, why now, and not some other moment? Seen through an existentialist lens, this confusion is itself a kind of luxurious illusion — everything is simply contingent.

That contingency is unsettling (and also strangely captivating). If everything is random, then are choice, effort, even suffering, all meaningless? In truth, our existence is nothing more than an accident. The accident carries no emotional color of its own — it simply happened. But just as probability theory exists within mathematics, people always seem to find some curious balance between chance and certainty.

Speaking of the song “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963,” I love this lyric from Rachel Yamagata: as far as you ever wander, you end up back home… and while it stings a little, thinking of Cao Pi’s line — “life is but a sojourn, why burden it with worry” — might ease that feeling somewhat.

The most as you’ll ever go

Is back where you used to know

…

Years may go by