Something that I have observed about teenagers everywhere is that they all have anxiety, which usually comes in different forms depending on person to person. From nervous jittering, to full-blown agoraphobia, everyone has some form of anxiety. However, there is a solution to this! And it is this simple fact: All of your anxieties, all your worries about how you look, or what other people think about you, don’t matter.
And before you think that I am a jerk (I am, but that’s irrelevant), there is statistical evidence you must know: According to N.A.S.A astrophysicist, Dr. Amber Straughn, in order to travel to Pluto in one of our modern-day cars, it would take over 6000 years, and that is just in our solar system. As we know, the measurement for distance in space is called light-years, but even then, one light-year (which is equal to 6 trillion miles) doesn’t communicate how vast this really is. Straughn later explains that the nearest star to our solar system is over 4 light-years away, whereas our entire galaxy is close to 100,000 light-years in diameter. However, all these are simplifications, the numbers demonstrate that our galaxy alone is over 600 quadrillion miles in diameter, give or take. And that’s just our galaxy.
There are a near-infinite number of galaxies in space, and in fact, space itself is perpetually expanding. Straughn estimates that the current size of the universe is equal to 92 billion light-years and is expanding. As Douglas Adams wrote in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, “[we are] a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says “You are here.” And he is not wrong. In fact, on our planet, even with the technologies we have on Earth, such as motor vehicles and air transport, it would take seventeen days of non-stop driving at 60 mph to cross the earth’s circumference…once. And imagine that on foot. The vast landscapes that we see every day, from the Indian Peaks to the Flatirons which are only in the state of Colorado, this is all just one tiny portion of our world.
So in the vastness of near infinity, our problems are meaningless. As much as you may think that the “world will end” if you ask out the person you have a crush on, it won’t. And even if it did, in the long run, does it really matter? Everything is completely irrelevant in the vast cosmic picture of the universe. So my point is, why should we be afraid of something that doesn’t even matter at all?
This concept is similar to “nihilism,” a philosophy defined by “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, however, I have changed this idea to form a new type of philosophy: relative nihilism.
Because when I first came up with relative nihilism, I thought, “Does this mean that my dreams, my goals, and my wishes are meaningless?” And my answer is no, the reason why those things matter is that it matters to me. The reason why you think about the things that give you anxiety is that it matters to you, whether that is to your own detriment or not. So instead of giving in to fear or worry, choose to rid yourself of such fears that might otherwise affect you on a daily basis. Try to live your life without the crushing anxiety that has become the norm for teenagers. It is completely pointless to be afraid since in the entirety of our existence, nothing truly matters.
