Albert Camus faced the absurdity of an irrational world by forging his own meaning in his personal passions. If we're to survive the absence of universal meaning, we must do the same. 

The universe doesn’t give a shit about you. It lives by a basic, merciless rule: things must change. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

The atoms that make up your body and consciousness won’t stick around for long. They want to leave and join something else—a blade of grass, a plastic coke bottle, an aardvark. It doesn’t matter. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Atoms just want to flit around, and the fact that you need them to stay alive is inconsequential. You can fall on your knees, clasp your hands together and beg for salvation, but it won’t make any difference. The universe doesn’t care—things must change.

When Albert Camus suggested that suicide was the only serious philosophical question, he was asking the same thing. Is it worth struggling through a life that ends in annihilation?

I first learned about death from The Land Before Time, a classic kids movie from the 80s about five plucky young dinosaurs trying to survive. As Littlefoot’s brontosaurus mother lays dying after a battle with the formidable Sharptooth, and it becomes clear that she can no longer be with him, the realisation hit me: dinosaurs aren’t permanent. At some point, they cease to exist. Then I realised that other animals cease to exist. Then humans. Then myself.