(WHY I LOVE NIHILISM) I Know That All Beneath The Moon Decays
I am very fond of this poem. In my interpretation, it represents quite well everything that people get wrong about nihilism. It stops at the first step, that everything is temporary and so - everything is meaningless.
But why should this be sad ? Why bind surface level nihilism to absolute pessimism ? Why do people stop here ?
The next step is, everything is inherently meaningless but not definitively meaningless. I can write my own meaning into it. I have to imbed my own meaning into it. Also, if nothing matters well I say that doesn’t matter either. I can do whatever the fuck I want. I HAVE to do whatever the fuck I want, it’s my responsibility. It’s liberating. It’s freeing it’s uplifting it’s exciting. There’s no rules or laws or pressures anymore, life is a blank slate and you get to do whatever the fuck you want. Maybe that really is terrifying on a cosmic level but on a mundane one it’s just so fucking funny. If everything is meaningless why am I stressing about these dumb little human t h i n g s. If nothing matters then the extra bowl of cereal really doesn’t fucking matter does it ? If everything is temporary, so is this jaded undertow reeling me against my days and preventing me from sleep. It gets better. It gets worse. You need both in order to experience all of the hues of human experience and I kinda want to experience it to the fullest; you know, since life is up to interpretation and pointless and short, we might as well.
ps: I mean with a name like William Drummond of Hawthornden, can you really get anything wrong ?
BOOK: Love Poems by Everyman's Library Pocket Poems
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