Imagine this; you’re sitting in class learning all the things your teacher assures you are necessary to know in order to live in the world you were brought into. All of the sudden, you hear a voice from someone sitting behind you, a voice you never heard speak before. Little do you know, you’re about to hear a philosophical insight that will change the way you view life altogether. “Why does any of this matter anyways? We live on a floating rock.” This mindset is something I like to call “floating rock syndrome.” People who think this way live their lives constantly reminding themselves of their insignificance. Humankind and the systems we’ve set up all exist on a rock floating in infinite space, so why does anything I do matter? This is the core belief of someone with a floating rock mentality, but where did this thought process come from?
Having the mentality that nothing really matters isn’t always a harmful thing when it comes to taking risks and facing anxiety, but the floating rock mentality is something entirely different. This thought process comes from a place of hopelessness. I saw this idea being spread around more and more during the height of the pandemic. People being stuck at home with nothing good to look to in the world was a huge factor in the floating rock mentality becoming more prevalent. I believe the main issue causing this mindset is the state of mental health after lockdown. Clinical depression diagnoses have greatly increased in students both during and after lockdown. Reminding yourself that you live on a floating rock and that nothing matters is a coping mechanism and an unhealthy one at that.
Floating rock syndrome spread through social media like wildfire over the course of the pandemic and the effects still linger today. The opinions on this concept are mixed. Some believe they can now live their lives however they please with their uncaring freedom. Others think that this mindset is useless and that people need to face reality. While I do believe that letting go of anxiety by choosing not to care about something specific can be healthy, it becomes unhealthy when it is taken to the extreme. The world is becoming a scarier place each and every day and it’s hard to remain hopeful while participating in the society set up for us. It’s hard not to question how things are somewhere infinitely far away and sometimes it’s even hard to pretend like human beings matter at all when there’s more in outer space than the human brain even has the ability to process. Maybe then, it’s okay to not think about everything that exists. Maybe it’s okay to walk outside and play catch and raise your hand in class and get the answer wrong. Maybe it’s okay to adopt a dog and listen to music and wave to your neighbor when passing by. Maybe it’s okay to learn about the past and think of the future as small as those things are compared to it all. Maybe we aren’t meant to think about it all.
