If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

— Thomas Nagel

Someone asked me if I had a “message of hope” to share. I do not. I think I have a better message—one that doesn’t require hope. To hope is to “borrow” imaginary pleasure from something that hasn’t—and may not—happen: pleasure we believe we’ll feel if some imagined reality comes to pass. As in other situations, borrowing may be helpful in transcending some hurdle. But, as in other cases, if we have ways of transcending the hurdle in other ways or even eliminating it using means we already possess, we may be better off not borrowing at all.

This is why hope is so treacherous. If what we desire doesn’t come to pass, our future disappointment may offset or exceed whatever positive affect we gained in the present by hoping. And, if what we hope for comes to pass, we likely will revel in it for a bit, but immediately begin hoping for something else, feel dissatisfied again, and be tempted to hope—to borrow—more.

Eventually, borrowing happiness and meaning from uncertain futures becomes habitual, even addictive. Addiction is something we do compulsively to assuage ourselves in the short term even if it leads to adverse consequences in the long term. In their definition of addiction, the American Psychological Association (APA) states, “The term is often used as an equivalent term for substance use disorder or substance dependence and can be applied to non-substance-related behavioral addictions.” Although it’s likely that no psychologist will say so outright, given the risk of worsening rather than helping a patient’s suffering, it remains true in the strictest sense that too many of us are addicted to hope. (This, by the way, is part of the reason I am skeptical of so-called “positive psychology” and other disciplines that promise healing by means of self-deception, and thus are only effective so long as the deception can be sustained.)

Our brain’s reward system is designed such that that the pleasure we feel when we get what we hope for usually does not live up to the pleasure we believed we’ll feel when we hoped for it. As Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long wrote in The Molecule of More, “Our worlds of fantasy can become narcissistic havens where we are powerful, beautiful, and adored. Or perhaps they’re worlds where we are in total control of our environment the way a digital artist controls every pixel on his screen. As we glide through the real world, half blind, caring only about things we can put to use, we trade the deep oceans of reality for the shallow rapids of our never-ending desires. And in the end, it might annihilate us.” Later in the book, they concluded bluntly, “Living our lives in the abstract, unreal, dopaminergic world of future possibilities comes at a cost, and that cost is happiness.”

To hope is, according to Albert Camus, “a sin against life.” The sin, Camus explained, “consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” If we could find sufficiently satisfying meaning in the present—in the experiences, beauty, and opportunities open to us—in reality as it is, not as we hope it to be—we would have no need for hope. To hope, therefore, we must first be dissatisfied. It follows that people who are perpetually hopeful are also perpetually dissatisfied. To what end?

The great pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer explained the futility of hope. In his essay, “The Vanity of Existence,” he wrote:

Even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again. We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expectation of which they passed all their time. Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!

Unlike Schopenhauer (and perhaps to the surprise of some who may have assumed it), I am not a pessimist. This is for the same reason that I am not an optimist: both optimism and pessimism are forms of bias, which is to say they skew our judgment (and consequent perceptions) away from rational assessment. I strive consciously (admittedly, sometimes against my instincts) to exclude biases from my judgments when I become aware of them, or to self-correct when I realize too late that I had fallen victim to some prejudice.

One such realization came to me recently after noticing that on several of my recent hiking excursions—an activity I consider vital to my wellbeing and that I know from experience to have the power to heal and elevate my spirit like no other—I have become mired in feelings of frustration and anxiety. I would return from my outdoor explorations feeling depleted rather than energized, my mood and thoughts permeated with ennui rather than enriched with inspiration and new ideas as I had… ahem… hoped… for them to be. Upon reading Schopenhauer’s words above, I understood why. “We often repent and long to have the past back again,” he wrote. That was my problem.

After recent setbacks, seeking to recover my capacity for inspiration and to experience beauty, I went to familiar places to commune with familiar things, expecting them to affect me in familiar ways. But they did not. It was this expectation that prevented me from appreciating my experiences fully. I was trying to relive, to re-experience, to re-feel things I remember feeling as the person I was before the change—the person I remember myself being, and have unwittingly come to consider as “the real me,” or as “my true self.” But “the real me” is not an absolute, static, well-defined entity. It is an entity that is by nature constantly changing and evolving. It is not something that I am or something that I became; it is something that is always in the process of becoming. “This secret spoke Life herself unto me,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, “‘Behold,’ said she, ‘I am that which must ever surpass itself.’”

Without at first realizing why, I became anxious when I did not feel things as I expected to feel them, as I remembered feeling them. Rather than recognizing the need to form new, adaptive, feelings for these places, things, and experiences, I instead worried about the prospect that I may never feel again as I used to. But this worry is futile. It is a fact that I will never feel them in quite the same way again—that I will never again be the person I used to be, at least not entirely. I knew then that I must learn to feel as, and to love as, the person I now am. Someday, likely, I will have to do so again as the person I will become. Worrying about it will change nothing. “My formula for greatness in a human being,” Nietzsche wrote, “is amor fati [Latin for “love of fate”]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it-all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”

“The owl of Minerva first begins her flight with the onset of dusk,” wrote Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The owl, symbolizing wisdom, only takes flight at the end of the day, after the day’s lessons have been learned, contemplated, and reflected upon. Not before. Wisdom is something gained by experience or contemplation, not by hoping.

To yearn for an unchangeable past or to an imagined future that we consider as “better” than the present is implicitly to consider the present—the only time we get to experience—as “not as good” if not as outright “bad.” Yet it remains true that we are better in the present, if for no other reason than that only in the present we are free to make choices, discharge our wisdom, learn new knowledge, experience with our senses, create, think.

We may consider some of our memories as better than our present experiences. But memories are parts of our present experience. If they are good, their goodness counts toward our pleasure in the present. If they are bad, we may also feel pleasure in the present for having outlived them. In the same sense, we may say that memories to the past are what hopes are to the future: things we may take pleasure in now despite them not happening now. But the laws of entropy and probability make memories and hopes different. Memories may be considered as earned values, as already realized returns on investments already made. Hopes, on the other hand, must be considered as having speculative values—the value of a gambles, subject to the same laws of probability. This is why memories are better than hopes.

Value judgments—what philosophers call “normative” judgments—as well as judgments about how good or bad something is—what cognitive scientists call “valence”—come to us so intuitively that we rarely even think to doubt them. We believe we know innately what is good for us and what is not. We feel it in our guts as clear, unambiguous readings from our “moral compass,” which we assume to be always right. We rarely stop to compare these moral compass readings against our rational maps. We rarely consider the fundamental difference between moral compasses and magnetic compasses: that one points to something absolute outside of us, while the other points to something relative and subjective within us. One points to a magnetic pole we cannot change, the other points to a pole we are free to relocate by mere thought. We may even believe that to question our moral values—especially those that feel most noble—amounts to heresy and a moral wrong. So powerfully have our minds been shaped by doctrines, by society, by evolutionary selection. And yet, as William Shakespear expressed it in the voice of Hamlet, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Ironically, Hamlet uttered his profound realization to his friend Rosencrantz, attempting—against Rosencrantz’s protest—to defend his previous claim that his kingdom, Denmark—and indeed the whole world—is a prison. Ironically, he failed to see the wisdom in his own words. By his own admission, he could, if he wanted, free himself from his imaginary prison by the powers of his own thoughts. So can I. So can you. But it is not easy. It requires not only changing our minds but changing the ways we make up your minds. As John Stuart Mill put it in his Autobiography, “no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”

One such great change is a change of perspective: seeing, perceiving, and thinking about the world not from the perspective of a person surrounded by a vast reality of irresistible forces, subject to whims and turns of fate as the Stoics would have us do, but from the perspective of existence itself: the highest form of intellectual transcendence that the human mind is capable of.

In his Ethics, published after his death in 1677, Baruch Spinoza introduced the Latin term sub specie aeternitatis (which, for the purpose of this article, may be translated as, “from the perspective of eternity”) into the philosophical jargon. The term became popular with many later thinkers as a useful way to examine the world as phenomena (as it presents itself to our senses and intellect, distinct from the way it may “really be,” which may be beyond our ability to perceive or imagine) without bias and prejudice.

From the perspective of eternity, all things are of equal value—neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither important nor unimportant. Such judgments may be made only within limited contexts: by certain people in certain places, situations, and times, based on subjective opinions, beliefs, dogmatic tenets, unprovable axioms, or utilitarian calculations, and not biased by unwarranted optimism or pessimism. From the perspective of eternity, things are just what they are, having no valences or normative values: qualities we associate with them, often without deeper consideration, often leading us to absurd beliefs, thoughts, and ways of life. “The absurd,” Camus wrote, “is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

To live our limited human lives under the assumption eternity, is the only form of freedom available a human being. This is because freedom of the mind implies making judgments and choices, to the extent possible, by way of reason rather than under the constraints or impulses of opinions (one’s own or others’), superstitions, desires, biases—the very things that become meaningless when considered from the perspective of eternity. “It is the nature of reason,” Spinoza wrote, “to regard things under the assumption of eternity.” Elsewhere, he wrote, “I call free him who is led solely by reason; he, therefore, who is born free, and who remains free, has only adequate ideas; therefore, he has no conception of evil, or consequently (good and evil being correlative) of good.”

The perspective of eternity is polarizing because it implies something profound yet doesn’t suggest an obvious “right” way for us to feel about it. We strive for meaning in our subjective lives, but eternity implies objective meaninglessness. Whatever we do, think, or feel, no matter how profoundly meaningful—the fact that we even existed—will in time mean nothing at all to no one at all. Existence is nihilistic. And we may be so, too. But we don’t have to be. Just as anything we do, think, or feel will someday become meaningless, so will our choice to live meaningfully, even if in error. This may be the hardest thing of all to accept, especially for those who take comfort in rationality: in eternity, even the truth doesn’t matter. To live sub specie aeternitatis is to live in recognition of the bounded finality of our individual existence, with the goal of maximizing subjective meaningfulness within these boundaries, knowing they will ultimately dissolve to nothing, and mean nothing. “For each person,” wrote Derek Parfit, “there is one supremely rational ultimate aim: that his life go, for him, as well as possible.”

The realization of cosmic meaninglessness may lead some—those who fail to realize that within their bounded lifespans they have a choice in the matter—to despair. But, considered differently, it may also yield the greatest sense of equanimity, the greatest urgency is making one’s life meaningful and interesting, knowing that it is short and exactly because it is short. It may be considered as the most liberating notion, freeing one from arbitrary impositions of dogmas, traditions, and expectations, if only in one’s mind. But often, we may choose to free ourselves form such things in body, too: defy, rebel, depart from the herd.

No doubt, there may be risks, perhaps even great ones, in asserting such liberation. But the question should always be on our minds: which is the bigger risk? To spend one’s quota of living moments in safely, in compliance with expectations, comforted perhaps by imaginary hopes, or to live dangerously—at least for as long as one can—as intensely and as (subjectively) meaningfully as one may get away with? Nietzsche had no qualms offering his opinion on this matter. “For believe me,” he wrote, “the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!”

What may not be obvious is that we get to choose which of these attitudes to adopt in making consequential life decisions: whether to live tacitly (as Thoreau put it) “a life of quiet desperation,” perhaps relying on hope more than (or the the exclusion of) certain experiential rewards for spiritual sustenance, or a life perhaps plagued by suffering and difficulties but underscored with such states of mind as deep awe, profound inspiration, and moments of great insight. One may think there may be a middle ground, a balance, a way of getting “just enough” of both. Perhaps there is. Perhaps this middle ground is only open to some people possessing certain personalities. I don’t know. I just know that for many years I have tried to find it and could not.

Although perhaps not a sine qua non requirement for a life of intense experiences, making and beholding art may fit well with, and greatly enrich such a life. Hermann Hesse described a life of intense experiences as one out of which “like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own.”

Søren Kierkegaard wrote cryptically, “Only when one has thrown hope overboard is it possible to live artistically; as long as one hopes, one cannot limit oneself.” What I think he meant is that to make art and to behold art (at least when one approaches these endeavors seriously) is in a sense also to acknowledge and reify the importance of making meaning within our finite and limited lives. Art exists and is justified in the narrow, limited realm of experiences that are meaningful but not practical. That is a severe limitation, one we’d have no reason to self-impose if the results did reward us with transcendence of our own practical limitations. Hope may also reward us with such transcendence, but art does so without the need to wager our happiness on future events. Tying together art, life, and the perspective of eternity, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.”

My message, then, is not one of hope, but in a sense the opposite of that: rather than hope for some imaginary reality, live and strive such that you find meaning, interest, and beauty in the reality you have, even if difficult, even if tragic, even if not obviously beautiful. Where you encounter injustice or suffering, work and take meaning in trying to alleviate or oppose it, but don’t do so for hope—for the sake of taking pleasure in imagining some distant outcome. Take pleasure in how it makes you feel right now to have done the right thing according to your own values. Recognize that others may have their own.

Always keep in the forefront of your thoughts that the times you spend in dissatisfaction and despair, hoping for something better, comes out of the same finite pool of living moments given to you as the times you invest in experiencing and contemplating beauty and meaning.

To live sub specie aeternitatis—to perceive consciously and deliberately ourselves, the world, and to  consider our choices from the perspective of eternity and our finite, meaningless place in it—doesn’t mean that nothing matters; it means that nothingness matters.