20. Where does this leave us?

We started with the What Is? question and followed it up with the What Ought To? question. Why do we experience the world the way we do and what are we expected to do with our lives?

Our quest for knowledge about the nature of reality exposed us to the infinite possibilities out there and the infinite regression this question leads us to.

You can just not care. You are still left with the task of creating a system of moral values and personal goals. What do you want to achieve in your life? How do you go about it? What moral rules do you want for yourself, and which ones do you expect others to follow?

You can choose a philosophy based on brute statements. Some of these philosophies come with bonus guidance on morals, purpose and meaning of life. But not all. If they don’t, you are left with the task of building one for yourself that is consistent with the philosophy.

You can choose to go after the truth and tackle the infinities and self-references. In that case, you already have a goal to work towards. You can still add more goals. There is no one to stop you. You being busy understanding transfinite numbers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set a goal to walk 10,000 steps every day. In fact, having a physical goal complements the mental goals well.

I am not equipped enough to tell you the path you must take. The best I could do is to tell you a path that you must not take.

It would be hypocritical of me to start these writings claiming that I won’t take sides but to end up being opinionated. After all these chapters of fence-sitting, I’ve earned one opinion. I mentioned in earlier chapters how we are faced with infinite possibilities when it comes to the nature of reality though we can discount some philosophies as they are inconsistent with our observations of the physical world. The same is true for what you want to do with your life. What we seem to be bound by is time and physical laws. Time itself may be infinite. But our life in the world seems finite. Sure, we may have life after death. We may be reincarnated. We may end up living the same life again and again. In which of these cases does it make sense to lead a boring life not caring about anything?

Pascal’s wager is a philosophical argument that says when choosing between believing in God and not believing, it’s rational to believe. The argument has well-known flaws - which God should you bet on? Can you even choose to believe something insincerely, and would that put you on God’s good side? But anyway, I plan to borrow its structure for an argument against nihilism.

It doesn’t matter if there is something after life or if there isn’t anything, it’s still wasteful to live your life without any sense of a goal or purpose. If there is nothing after life, you just wasted this fleeting existence in this world doing nothing even though you had a lot of potential. If there is something after life, you will just look back at this and be disappointed. Either way, it doesn’t make sense to embrace nihilism.

The world is just about predictable enough to allow you to set goals and work towards them while also unpredictable enough to surprise you on a regular basis and make the goals more challenging. It has its share of joy, sorrow, surprises, births, deaths and many more. Perhaps, not holding complete knowledge is what makes life interesting. To get the best out of it, set goals for yourself and strive to achieve them. Climb that mountain, write that book, publish that poem, learn to play that musical instrument, build that family, have those kids, learn science, learn philosophy, go after that infinity. No goal is superior or inferior to another.

The goal doesn’t even have to be challenging. If you can get happiness and satisfaction from an ordinary but content life, go for that. Just make sure that your goals are compatible. It doesn’t make sense to set one goal that you will travel 100 countries in a year and setting another goal that you will get promoted twice in the same year, unless your travel is part of the job.

You can’t find a goal for yourself? Look around and see if anyone wants help with their goals. Offer help only if they ask for it. Maybe they want to go after their goals independently no matter how hard it is. By the time you help achieve their goals, you may end up finding one for yourself.

Be ready to embrace defeats and learn to pick yourself up after them. Life may have dealt you a difficult hand - born into a poor family, living with a disability, or stuck with chronic illness. Do your best with what you have. What happens if you fail? Cry for a while. Then try again or go after another goal.

Philosophical questioning leads to infinite regression. You have a choice to even try and tame that infinity. Even otherwise, you have infinite possibilities. Pick one of the infinite paths in front of you and go for it with purpose. It would be rude not to.