Moments before I declared myself to be an atheist, I came to the realization that I was a nihilist. There is no intrinsic or objective meaning to life, the universe, and everything, no matter what number is offered as an answer. (Forty-two is not Numberwang. Sorry.) Even though I had spent much of my high school and junior college education studying physics, astronomy, and cosmology, and I had some clue as to the irrelevance of our precious blue gem adrift in the inky blackness of space, it wasn’t the Big Bang, it wasn’t galactic, stellar, or planetary formation, it wasn’t evolution that made me realize the meaninglessness of it all. It was unrequited love that tipped me over into nihilism. Unrequited love. How sappy is that?

When I was younger, I strongly identified with the archetype of the hopeless romantic. I was drawn to the idea that love was one of those things that could withstand the test of time, overcome adversity, and heal all wounds. In short, I was spoon-fed a greeting card lie and I believed it. I believed with every fiber of my being that somewhere out there in this callous, unfeeling, insensitive world, there was someone for me who would love me unconditionally and whom I would love equally unconditionally. But it was all a candy-coated fantasy surrounding a bitter pill which I was unprepared to swallow when I finally woke up from my delusion.

When I came to my senses that day, I was depressed. Not just because it finally sunk in through my thick skull that the Hollywood fantasy of love was a lie, but that I had been suckered into it for so long. I was depressed and angry at myself, and so I turned to what I had known about in my youth yet never fully embraced, the meaninglessness and the absurdity of it all, and decided that I wasn’t going to be a sucker anymore.

I don’t know what it’s like to leave a religion because I was never a member of one, but I imagine it’s something akin to what I experienced with my realization about love. There’s no such thing as unconditional love. It always comes with fine print. The same is true for the gods who claim unconditional love. (It’s always with conditions.) Gods are a fantasy for people who aren’t comfortable with the notion that life doesn’t have a grand purpose or an ultimate goal. Actually that’s probably one of the most beautiful things about life: it doesn’t have to be anything. It just is.

The Earth is just one object, among hundreds of thousands of other objects, orbiting a nondescript star. And that star is just one among one hundred billion other stars, each with hundreds of thousands of objects in orbit around them in this galaxy alone. And this galaxy is just one among … there are probably more galaxies in the universe than there are digits for a number large enough to quantify those galaxies. Infinity. (Now that’s Numberwang.) And yet there are people on this wee little planet who insist that our world was specifically designed by a benevolent, omnipotent creator for harboring human life. Yet look at how many places on our planet alone that will kill us if we went there. The idea of a god creating the world specifically for humankind was ludicrous to me before I arrived at atheism. Now it seems positively unfathomable to me how the human mind could fall victim to such an insidious idea.

But then I pause to reflect on what a religious or spiritual person might say to me upon learning that I do not subscribe to the notion of objective meaning, or the idea that there is a teleological reason for human existence. They would likely look upon me with great pity, or great contempt. I imagine they would see me as a heartless, amoral monster devoid of something like a conscience, a soul, or some other intangible essence that would successfully classify me as human. But I am indeed human. I eat. I sleep. I breathe. I complain about complicated tax forms. I grumble when the weather is cold. I smile at the pungent scent of a bouquet of lilies. I draw silly scribbles and write bad poetry. I look up at the stars and marvel at their beauty. I grow hair in places I wished didn’t grow hair. I do human things.

Ah, they say, but believing in a god is a human thing. Yes, I reply, and so is violently taking the life of another human being. Not all of us do those things, though many have been known to do them both: one in the name of the other. And for what? To proclaim to all the other ants on the anthill that theirs is the true imaginary friend and all others are false? I choose not to participate in this practice of belief in a god. Whether gods exist or not, they are not required in my worldview in order for me to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

I will look at the stars and how they cluster together into galaxies. I will look at the rocks and strata of this planet of ours and see how its pieces fit together. I will admire the beauty of flora and fauna. I will relish the diversity of architecture, cuisine, music, literature, and so many other aspects of human cultures from all over our tiny blue pearl in space. These things don’t require meaning to be enjoyed. “Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.”

We are children on a playground with only the bell of death to call us back in to non-existence, but the bullies of dogma, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, keep us from being able to truly enjoy ourselves during our inconsequential fraction of a moment of existence which we have in this universe. Falling out of love with love was a sorrow to be sure, but it has opened my eyes up to a whole new way of looking at my place in the cosmos. I do not need a purpose for the cosmos to be, nor a telos for the cosmos to move toward. I will never understand the nature of reality. It will always be a great enigma to me. And I’m okay with that mystery.