The poem “Nothing” has been something that has intrigued me ever since I picked up science at school. Ultimately, I think my views can be described as almost existentialist or even nihilistic, but these are views I have made peace with as I matured. In my eyes, there really isn’t a reason why we should believe that humans are the saviors in the universe when we will never even be able to comprehend or explore literally any of it. Rather, we are a cosmic blip that will disappear as fast as we appeared in the eyes of space. I think that thought is quite liberating. There are no expectations on us, and thus we should do everything we can to just enjoy life. Our mistakes don’t have cosmic consequences and this misconceived responsibility that we have over the universe isn’t real.
I feel like this parallels my journey as a student at school, someone who was too focused on the future and not really enjoying the here and now. Thus when I wrote this, I wanted to draw comparisons to my thought process from when first entered school. At first, I thought I was special for entering a magnet school that I had to test into, just as humans probably feel very special for being the only observable intelligent life in the universe. However, it soon becomes very apparent that my school is not a guarantee to a good future. You are still in competition with millions of equally talented and ambitious students and that people who enter Whitney aren’t really that special. However, something not included in the poem is that even though the idea of overwhelming cosmic nihilism is scary, we shouldn’t let it burden our lives. Just because the tag of my school doesn’t really mean anything in the end, that doesn’t we’re not special still. We are still a school of extremely intelligent people and it should be an environment that continues to encourage academic and emotional inspiration rather than crush with the “spirit of competition”.