sound and fury

Yes, it's one of the top 10 most over-used quotes in the English language, and no, I'm not going for a Faulkner reference but something much older. Macbeth on life: "...it is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Underneath all the shouting and all the whispering, the anger, jealousy and violence, the pettiness and greed that seem to dominate modern life, I sometimes think I hear a small voice coming from each of us. And it's saying, "Notice me while I'm still here. Tell me I'm important. Remember me when I'm gone."

How can we escape self-reference in language when language is ultimately a personal thing? Like any form of art, it's something we produce directly, with very few external tools. Of course we can repeat the words of others, and we can try our best to speak objectively, but it's still our voice that carries the idea. The idea travels through us and is shaped by the passage.

Is all our noise and motion an attempt to drown out the question, if I'm eventually going to die, what's the point of life? Some of us confront the question, but can any answer be satisfying?

Think of giant sequoias. Think of the growth of mountains. Think of the movement of seas. Think outward to the comets in their 100-year orbits. From these perspectives, the life of one human being seems brief and insignificant. We live within so many interwoven cycles of existence - each of us will experience the life and death of insects, plants, pets, strangers, loved ones. We may experience the death of races and cultures. Those of us alive today will hopefully never experience the death of the human race or the planet we live on, but we've been educated enough to know even that won't last forever. The lifetime of our planet, solar system and sun is a short one on the timeline of the universe.

But does it make you feel better or worse to know that not only are you going to die, but so is the sun? To know that millions of people have had the same fears and desires you're having right now? To know that this comfortable society we rely on and take for granted has only existed in the form we know for about 200 years, a heartbeat the 4.7 billion year lifetime of the earth?

We still go through life looking out at the world from behind our own eyes. No matter what we believe about our own death, we still need to live though every moment until then. So we still shout, and we sing, and we tell stories. We desire tangible and intangible things. We argue over how to raise our children and what we want for dinner. We live, and we do the things we do because they are what gives meaning to the moments.