I guess it has been some years now. Unlike many of my peers I believe I have started thinking about “life” from an early age. It was for some long forgotten reason that I realized around the age of 12 that I am going to die one day. Such a terrible thought to think. Especially by a child. Every time it came across my mind there were two outcomes. In one case I just quickly rejected the thought and tossed it aside, continuing my previous work. In the other - I stopped everything and started to comprehend the solemnness of the situation. At first my pulse raised a bit, and I started to get nervous. Then I felt that my heart is already pounding hard. It felt like I’m pushing the boundaries of something half-physical/half-mental. “Everybody dies. We are human after all.” was what I told myself while calming down.

I had many of these “mental spikes” and with time have learned to deal with them. When my grandfather died I contemplated on the topic more than ever before since it was my first confrontation with death. Putting the emotional aspect of losing your loved ones aside, I thought that it is simply unfair, and I didn’t want to accept the fact that my grandpa was gone. I talked to my parents and friends, hoping that they will have “the answer” but they didn’t. Maybe I could not accept that they just live with the thought, maybe I wanted them to tell me that it is not true. Somehow it did not make sense that lifetime of achievements, languages learnt, friendships made, work done, knowledge gained - that it was all for nothing.

As a curious person I discovered that I have a fascination for the cosmos and particularly about the amazing and ever intriguing celestial bodies named black holes. Slowly but steadily I began exploring what was written and said about them. That’s how I found about the work of Stephan Hawking. I got as a gift his great book “A Brief History Of Time” which helped me make sense of many things I discovered surrounding the black holes topic. Einstein’s theory of general relativity, time as a forth dimension, string theory, big bang - all those complicated things with great names. Later came terms like expansion of the universe, dark energy, dark matter, worm-holes, parallel universes, the heat death of the universe. I realized that a human life is rather insignificant. Look at the mere fact that we, humans, are using the term “light years” because kilometers make you use too many zeros when you talk about the distance to the Andromeda galaxy (21,000,000,000,000,000,000 km). Can you please stop here for a second and think about how much time a “light year” is? To put things in perspective the Sun is 149,600,000 km away from Earth. Light travels this distance in 8,3 minutes.

The region visible from Earth (the observable universe) is a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light years, based on where the expansion of space has taken the most distant objects observed. Can you imagine this??? I can’t. Such an enormous amount of … stuff out there somewhere, and I will NEVER be able to see any of it. Maybe I should look at how it all began or how it all got there. Being part of all this forced me to rephrase my problem by changing my previous statement about dying turned into the following question - “What is the purpose of life?”

I’m an emotional person, and I tend to reflect on everything life throws at me. So all of these things were building up inside me for years. And as every person I have limitations. They were reached when I watched “Interstellar”. As a fan of Christopher Nolan and cosmology I was very excited to watch the movie. When I finally did, something inside me broke. Or maybe I should say “clicked”. It didn’t come as a surprise to me that after leaving the cinema, holding my girlfriend’s hand I had a lump stuck down my throat. The reason was that I had seen the grand cosmic objects I have read so much about, come to life on the huge screen in front of me. I managed to experience (almost) first hand what the characters felt when they explored the vastness of space, plunging themselves into black or worm-holes. I saw how one could move beyond dimensions and manipulated time.

Having some days to reflect on what I have seen, I tried to look for something more than just the consumer product. I was happy that Kip Thorne had guided his idea to the stage were Nolan could share it with the whole world. Most of all I was happy that I had the opportunity to look at simulated space objects no matter that they were based on some math that could be wrong.

For many of us it is hard to live each day not knowing why we exist. It is a simple yet very tough question to answer. You might as well ignore it in your daily life but sooner or later you will have to face it. Not knowing if everything you do is already written somewhere, if you are taking predetermined routes, if your choices do not matter or if the thing you call free will is not your own.

If there is no greater force that lurks in the higher dimensions whose intelligence we are unable to understand, I am ready to accept the fact that human beings are one perfect (and I do mean absolutely prefect) set of circumstances. One great coincidence that lead to the creation of intelligent beings able to ask “Why?”.

Maybe there is no greater purpose, no meaning beyond the scope of our short lives. What should one make of this then? Easy - just be happy. Be curious. Keep exploring. Don’t stress. Don’t worry. Live life to the fullest and try to experience everything it has to offer. Be the best that you can and cherish every moment you get because no matter how small it is - it is real, and you own it.