Alex, your reflection into the subjective is compelling. Thank you for that. I wonder as you…as each of us must, the how and why to the journey as you called it. This is axiomatic. What isn’t possibly is where all things can begin. To be precise, what is it that makes you even consider the question and its potential answer? Begin there and invert. I believe you are a thinker with the unique ability to genuinely pause at intersections. After a lifetime of not looking either way much less both, I would suggest a protracted pause.

Most creatures never ponder as they have no pause button. There is only the internal algorithm pushing out muscle reflex metrics leading to the next act. What you…each of us have in life is the option beyond which possibly creates a meaning…a deeper meaning stretching into the fog of the pause.

Can all be simply a reflection of what has and is drawn into the individual pause and unlike the creature world that surrounds us, we ponder the grist as if the pondering is the effect of a pause that relates to nothing more than creating an insight or perspective transcendent. What if it is not simply you and me but the collective that truly matters. Not necessarily the collective of the 7 billion but the collective of all those who preceded us. The collective is a conflation which can only be transcendent if each and all individually take pause at their own intersection. To seek and find a meaning means creating a construct. Of course, this is a human mandate. Sans the mandate, is there a place beyond where meaning and purpose is simply a consequence while the reward for the present is simply in the pause…and its gifts while establishing the foundation for all in the future. Can this be humanities purpose…its meaning? Granted this place has a lonely feeling particularly in the first few moments.

Life is individual, while to your point regarding the collective conscious, can it not simply be to serve a grander good for today and critically, essentially for our brothers tomorrow. We are more than individuals while like players on a sports team, as one goes we all go and where we all go we all merge. We are grist for a grander mill. The mill is beyond reach while enveloping us. The goal is to pause at the one’s intersection and think. Think brings the incremental establishing a new. Incremental raises all ships …both those at sea as well as those in the harbor. There can be no greater purpose. With purpose comes meaning.

Thanks for listening.

Good luck and safe journey

Eric