Step by step, moment by moment, breath by breath

If nothing really matters, then why does it matter that nothing matters?

In a previous post titled Why I Am (or At Least Try to Be) a Libertarian, I explored the principles of freedom and responsibility that guide my political philosophy. But even the most passionate belief in personal agency can feel fragile when confronted by life’s bigger, thornier questions: Does anything we do matter? Why bother striving when the universe seems indifferent and “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.” These are the kinds of questions nihilism confronts us with, and, to be fair, it’s hard to deny the appeal of its stark, simple honesty.

Nihilism doesn’t sugar-coat things. It declares, with admirable bluntness, that nothing lasts, nothing is guaranteed, and much of what we do is, frankly, futile. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams captures this existential absurdity perfectly. The supercomputer Deep Thought spends 7.5 million years calculating the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” The answer it finally produces? “42.” Delivered with deadpan humour, the joke is unsettling. What if life’s ultimate meaning is either incomprehensible or completely irrelevant? Adams, a master satirist, revels in this absurdity. His work suggests that if the cosmos is a joke, our best response is to laugh along with it.

Shakespeare, unsurprisingly, takes a darker view. In Macbeth, a weary and broken king proclaims: “Life’s...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It’s nihilism in Elizabethan garb: ambition, effort, and achievement—all of it dissolves into meaninglessness in the face of mortality. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot echoes the same bleakness. Two characters wait for a saviour who never arrives, passing the time with repetitive, circular conversations. If you’ve ever felt trapped in an endless meeting that could’ve been covered in an email, you’ve already lived this play.

But it’s not just literature that wrestles with these ideas. Nihilism has philosophical roots, particularly in 19th-century Europe, when Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared, “God is dead.” It wasn’t a celebration but a lamentation—a recognition that traditional sources of meaning were eroding. Without divine guarantees or moral certainties, nihilism emerged as a worldview that offered clarity but little comfort. If nothing lasts and nothing matters, why care?

The simplicity of nihilism is seductive. It spares us the burden of hope and ambition, offering detachment in place of meaning. Yet there’s something unsatisfying about its stark clarity. If nothing matters, then why does it matter that nothing matters? Nihilism solves the riddle of existence by throwing away the puzzle altogether.

Even the bible is not immune to nihilism’s seductive appeal. “The Preacher,” the narrator of the biblical book Ecclesiastes, begins with what seems to be a nihilistic premise: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” According to The Preacher, everything is fleeting. The sun rises and sets; the winds circle endlessly; generations come and go, and before you know it, we’re dust. Even justice is unreliable:

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…but time and chance happen to them all.”

It certainly sounds bleak. But where nihilism sees futility, Ecclesiastes sees an opportunity. If nothing lasts, the Preacher says, then we might as well make the most of what we’ve got while we’ve got it. He urges us to eat, drink, and find joy in our work, not as a distraction from life’s absurdity but as its essence. “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.” It’s the ancient equivalent of saying, “Life is short; always order dessert.”

The Preacher’s view resonates with Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust and went on to write Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl argued that life’s meaning isn’t found in grand, universal truths but in specific, fleeting moments: comforting a friend, watching a sunrise, sharing a quiet meal. Like Ecclesiastes, Frankl believed that life’s transience isn’t its flaw—it’s what gives it weight.

Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, put it beautifully when he wrote:

“Faith is not certainty; it is the courage to live with uncertainty. Faith does not mean seeing the world as you would like it to be; it means seeing the world exactly as it is, yet never giving up the hope that we can make it better.”

Sacks argued that Ecclesiastes’ advice to “fear God and keep his commandments” isn’t about blind obedience but about reverence—a way of living humbly in the face of life’s mysteries. It’s a reminder that while we can’t control life’s outcomes, we can control how we respond to them.

And here lies the eternal beauty of Ecclesiastes. It doesn’t pretend life is neat or fair. It doesn’t promise answers or happy endings. Instead, it invites us to embrace the messiness, savour the small joys, and find meaning in the present.

T.S. Eliot captured the Preacher’s wisdom in “Little Gidding:”

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The answer to the meaning of life was there all along. It isn’t an aphorism, a formula, or a destination—it’s a way of living. Step by step, moment by moment, breath by breath, we uncover meaning not through certainty but through presence. Along the way, what once seemed like vanity transforms into value, especially when paired with good food, a little laughter, and someone to share it with.

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