Stanford, CA – Experts now agree that despite all your efforts to fill your life with meaning, all things – good things, bad things, all lives, brief and long – must come to an end. The friends and family you cherish will pass away, and you can only hope they do so peacefully and in comfort. The trees that sway in the gentle Palo Alto breeze and give shade to weary students will tumble, rot, and decay. The flower that blooms this morning will subside, sun-bleached and wilted, in the evening. All is an elaborate fiction. Even you, all that you are and have been, will flicker out in an instant. Even now, your past is only a flawed memory preserved in the oh-so-fragile folds of your brain.
Experts also suggest that you be aware that nothing you achieve can ever truly matter, that you do not matter, that nothing matters and nothing can ever matter. Our feeble planet will be used up and burned in the infinity of the cosmos. And even if we settle other planets, the greatest achievements of science and technology cannot save us from the ultimate final end, the heat death of the universe. Even surviving so far into the future, experts note, would consign you to an existence dependent on machines, a life of utter loneliness. Love is nothing. Humanity is nothing. Good, and evil, are nothing, nothing, nothing.
Said one student, William Stuart, of the news, “Oh, wow, I- I was having such a good day, but now… I want to hug my mother but all I can imagine is her turning to dust, floating away on the wind. Gosh, even the wind will someday die…”
Experts also reminded the public that they can never truly know if anyone they care about has ever loved them, that most human emotions can be attributed to well-understood chemical reactions in the brain, and that you should always wash your hands before handling food.
