Thrown into the universe, the sons and daughters of entropy, billions of years of deep time and millions of years of evolution, living, breathing, dying, surviving; a spec on a dot which, from “the view from nowhere”, would barely be noticed in the grand scheme of things; and then an animal that became something a little more, or maybe even a glorified virus in the biosphere, a tension that nonetheless is the aria of affirmation within an existence far beyond our grasp in a seemingly indifferent cosmos, we are left hanging on perhaps an insoluble question. We have no idea where we came from and we have no true confirmation on where we are going. All of us are left with everyone else in this place. And we all know suffering as well as we are sure of our own first-person consciousness. This is a strange place, and it can be a scary place. But maybe our collective confusion doesn’t need to reflect this empty indifference the universe imposes upon us. We have the capacity for so much more novelty within ourselves that we can share with each other. There are destructive forces but there are also creative forces, forces for discord but equally forces for communion and community. One pushes us down, but the other has the ability to raise us up and make the vagaries of our temporary lives worth the tiny spark of time we are given. It can be seen as a curse, but maybe it can also more acutely be seen as a gift. There may never be one true way of knowing one way or another, but to most of us, perhaps the path towards happiness and joy and love, which builds us up and helps us grow, through the mystery of life itself, is a path worth taking. So when I look at another human being, enveloped as we all are in this riddle, all of this is reflected in me, and I am a reflection of them. And despite the spectre of nihilism forever brooding in our existential ignorance, almost as some kind of revolutionary act, I choose to be kind.