A sincere response to the meaning of life from a non spiritual standpoint

I had a conversation which by chance or not got me deeper into thinking about what my purpose is in this life, on this earth and particular space-time continuum. I say my purpose because as of this day, as much as I believe we are all connected and have been hardwired into communities, I don’t think there’s an immaterial reason why.

As of today, I don’t feel the presence of another reality behind the one we can observe through a hard lense. There is life after our conscience, it just doesn’t envolve our limited sense of self. Life goes on and it can go on as we become parts of others as the physical body is shared, or we grow to help life in a macro way through our nutrients for other living creatures.

The conscience is an peculiar subject. Who is this person thinking inside this body? Why is it this way? Can we stretch our conscience? How much of this evolution is it a conscience stretch and how much is a defense mechanism to make us feel comfortable with the reality that a human life’s purpose is to inevitably end and that realisation not paralyse us to our core?

Religion as I’ve been presented to so far is the laziest of options into handling the questions we all have at some point about existence. It numbs the brain and makes for an easy fix. A set of deities is the glue leading one question to another and as much as it’s claimed it’s a revelation it doesn’t give room for thinking through what really lies within ourselves. It solely provides a curious mind with a bubble to explore, a play area for what you’re supposed to question. Organised thinking as much as it can be beneficial, in my mind is also shallow. What lies outside that range of questions or reflections you’re allowed to make in order to fit into that set of belief? It’s simply shallow.

I’m not denying that each of us is special and has a purpose; it is just that fact that this purpose is not a given. That purpose is not programmed into my brain or made out by some other unknown version of me that didn’t know what kind of life I’d lead. My reason, my purpose and my mission on earth is shaped by my experiences which have lead me to have this mind. I am the one who is supposed to listen to myself and navigate through what’s true to this person – on the subject of truth, one thing my education and my subjective experiences have taught me is that truth is not a singular but a realm of nuance. Truth is one observation after the other which will lead into a combined, where no honest interpretation is wrong. Truth is an amalgamation of a bunch of versions of what happened.

Having a godless, non spiritual approach to the meaning of life for me is taking accountability to live this life I know for a fact is happening as it won’t happen again. It is beautiful and absolutely freeing to come to the realisation that this is what I’ve got and there’s nothing left to expect in some imagined, intangible, immeasurable alternative. My appreciation for life has been growing exponentially ever since I stopped trying to find a faith in something else to latch on as means to be happier somewhere or somewhen else. As there’s no hope for a heaven to do me the justified happiness I was denied, a filling to the potholes life in this day and age with the being that I am, it is my greatest responsibility to do what I can to appreciate as well share the beauty I see and fight with all I’ve got to rectify the ugly around.

I am not in need of a third party saviour. Salvation is being my own person, having the best time I can with the resources I’m given both inside and out knowingly this is it, doing as little harm as I can. My moral comes from my heart for it reflects the type of community I’d like to build for myself and the earth in me.

This is chaos and life has happened here as most likely is happening/ have happened/will happen in countless other occasions. There’s not a reason why life is this way but the history we built and the genetic programming we have here and now, the way I see it, and that’s not a problem but a blessing. The why of life shouldn’t be so grand it makes special hierarchies between those destined for a life of abundance on the expense of most of us perishing on metaphorical lakes of fire and torture just to live in this unfair bogus system we’ve collectively made. It’s simply unfair.

I don’t have in me the aspiration for greatness nor a desire for earthly status. It is naïve to assume me or those like me are destined to make revolutions based on what someone else has said, again, in my opinion. Great change is made by one small group to the other through understanding and respect, not judgment of who’s right or wrong (that is a certified way to create unhappy people who are driven into not being true to themselves simply because they don’t have the tools to).

Every time the topic of faith/religion comes into the picture, the one claiming to be an atheist gets bombarded with questions of good and bad, life, thinking, moral, origins and justice but more often than not, we give far more thought into these topics than our believer counterparts (just to clarify, my atheist label is not an attack on your freedom to do with your life as you see fit. It is but a statement that out of the alternatives I’ve been presented, humanity is the one I believe in and if that changes, I don’t have any issues. So far though, this one is enough). Usually what a non spiritual process of thinking looks like is a hard look into the society we’re in and the one we believe would be the fairest. We’re not chosen or designed to rule anything. There’s no promise with my name on it – on the contrary, being born a female, non rich, black, lgbt and now atheist in Brazil is nothing but the opposite of a promise of fortune.

I would like to be thought of and remembered as someone who has loved intensely; loved life and has managed to share that. Part of my self discovery is knowing I am made for love, but not in a naïve way to say there’s no darkness anywhere nor in a simplistic way to just avoid bad things. The love that moves me is a drive for motion towards being light, both to where I go or how I see myself. See, I’ve battled depression for the longest time and because I was trying so hard to fit into this notion of purpose the faith in the supernatural gives, I was digging even deeper holes that to this day I am trying to fill, but most of them are healed after letting go of this notion of what I need to be to embark blindly into the territory of the parts of this individual and for me that’s far more precious than living a life denying who I want to be in order to fit a moral code made thousands of years ago by some random people who didn’t know me or this reality were in now, and if I’m wrong and realise I will have an eternity to suffer for unapologetically being who I am? So be it.