If we were put here but an all knowing being, then there is something to strive for. Some reason. Some meaning behind it all. If we simply arose out of millions of years of evolution, only to be wiped out at some point down the road, then it is meaningless. Small imprints of love are the only things on the path of life that give any of it much sense. So much of the day to day is spent wrestling with this in the background. So much of attaining something is, in reality, a subconscious quest to try and protect ourselves against a looming black void.
People often fail to perceive the rationale behind the choices they make. There is, in the recent lexicon, an idea of a hedonic treadmill. You buy things to make yourself feel better, but then you step feeling better and you have to buy something else. The inverse of this-minimalism-says that to truly feel content, you must get rid of many of your possessions. Both are an attempt to exhale, if only for a moment, all of the breath you’re holding in, staring at that void of yours. In other words, they are distractions. We want to be distracted. We yearn to be distracted. Anything not to stare at mortality. Any voice, any virtue, anything new, any return to old, any step is an attempt to look away from what is in front of us. The all consuming terror of it all.