Be still and know that I am God.

What is it about people that makes them so self-destructive? We all do it. Cheating on a diet, avoiding exercise or playing video games instead of studying are all ways we do the wrong thing and avoid doing the right thing. Why is it that with obvious consequences looming over us we choose a momentary indulgence? Is there a rational basis for this pattern of behavior? What is the mental calculus for self-destructive action? The behaviors labeled self-destructive are apparently irrational but they are carried out by otherwise rational actors. It is plausible therefore that addictions, crimes, destructive relationships and so on are at least perceived as preferable to some alternative course of action. What need is great enough to trick the mind of a married person into cheating when the pain and destruction that will result is so easy to predict? We go to great lengths to avoid pain. The pain that drives us into obviously poor decisions must be terrible. This terrible pain is a great aching emptiness common to all people. Filling it, assuaging it is the primary occupation of the vast majority. Its manifestations are workaholism, anorexia, ennui, shadenfreude, religiosity, racism, environmentalism, and every other attempt to create a sense of value in a senseless, relativistic world. It is a need for meaning that drives junkies, presidents, teachers, preachers and tyrants. The shout into the void is universal. I am here, I matter, I count. We all cry out, hoping for an answer. The scramble to make noise, enough noise to drown out the despair, consumes us. Drama queens and CEOs are equal in the void.

Strangely enough an answer exists. There is a piece that completes the puzzle. The final piece is a creator. With a self-existent creator the world has meaning. Whatever the plan and purpose of the universe is the fact is there is one. Everything that exists was made for a reason. As part of the world, we are each made for a purpose and existence does have a point that is not related to action. Since we are created, it is enough to simply be. Doing may now have many uses but it is utterly unnecessary as a means of answering the emptiness.