Realize that not everybody has the same beliefs, and respect that. You can never know exactly what another person has experienced. In our world, there's Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Judaism, and about 10 other major world religions, and within these religious groups there are thousands of different divisions. Edward Bulwer-Lytton once said, "Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light; every eye, looking on, finds its own."

Meaning doesn't have to be found in ancient texts though. In fact, it doesn't have to be found at all. The physicist Richard Feynman, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics, put it like this:

I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't have to... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
Living a religious life is relatively easy. You already know what you're supposed to do. Your life purpose may be to please a certain god or gods here on Earth so that you may enter a place of eternal happiness after death, or it may be to break a cycle of reincarnation in order to "become one" with the universe. But whatever religion you may choose to accept, you will always have the comfort that what you're doing here on Earth isn't a waste of your brief and precious life.

But what do you do if you choose not to give your life to religion? What is your goal when you view the universe as meaningless and completely independent of some mysterious supernatural force? That's a good question; it's one that many people are afraid to answer, but it's one that I'll try to answer.

Accepting a reality without "meaning" can be extremely hard. It can make you feel insignificant, confused, lost, and alone. You have no books, no people, no gods to tell you what to do or how to live your life. All principles, decisions, and meaning must come from within yourself. It's very easy to get caught up in thinking about why things happen the way that they do and how meaningless it all is: laughing, crying, talking, loving, learning, experiencing, everything. You view all your own actions from an evolutionary standpoint, as mere behaviors that evolved because they benefitted the species. Sometimes you can get so caught up, dwelling on how pointless everything is, that you lose all motivation. Your thoughts can become your entire life. You may feel trapped by your own existence, and at times you may even believe that bringing death upon yourself is the only way out.

So how do you deal with that? Well, you don't deal with it. The universe is meaningless; you accept it, and you forget it. "So what" if we popped out of nothing, or if we're only one of an infinite number of universes or histories. There are psychological, evolutionary, theoretical, physical, chemical, natural explanations for everything. You can spend your whole life thinking about it, being an emotionless machine, being dead to the world, or you can live. You can feel. You can learn. You can meet new people, try new things, and see new places. The thrill of experiencing is what makes life worth living, and this world is plenty big enough, and complex enough, to keep you occupied for a human lifetime.

When a beautiful girl looks deep into your eyes and smiles, don't think about the chemical reasons behind your increased heart rate and quickened breathing; don't think about the evolutionary reasons behind your attraction to the girl. When a friend tells you a funny joke, don't think about the meaning of "funny" or the behavior that laughing evolved from. And if someone close to you dies, don't think about the reality of death or the reasons for crying. Just smile at the girl, just laugh at the joke, just cry over the loss, just appreciate the moment. Feeling happiness, and even pain, is much better than not feeling anything at all.

There are reasons for everything. Sometimes those reasons make you feel like you don't have control of yourself, but you do have control. You can keep yourself from laughing if you understand why you're laughing. You can keep yourself from crying. You can keep yourself from loving. But don't control it. Just accept that emotions are meaningless, and that everything is meaningless, and just feel. Don't fight nature. Go with your instincts. Don't try to be strong. Don't try to be too smart, too tough for nature. Sometimes it takes a stronger, wiser person to be weak. Life is love and hate, happiness and sadness. Life is emotions. Life is feeling. Without emotions, you might as well be a robot. You might as well be dead. So live. So feel. Don't think. Feel.

In the end, we're all going to die anyway; the outcome is inevitable. So, look at things like this: you're here, and you'll be gone soon. You may be gone tomorrow, and when you're gone, you'll be gone for good. So live right now, because you're never going to live again. It all comes down to the old saying, "Is the glass half empty, or half full?"

I could go on preaching to you, but I won't. I've got plans at the lake. I've got plans to feel the sand between my toes and to feel the warm sun on my back. So let's hurry up and graduate and get out of here. Thanks teachers, parents, and everybody else. Thanks for the great memories, class of '02, and good luck with the future!

There is still hope for the future, my friends. Mr. Lucy, with luck, will play a great part.