The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

by Sean Carroll

Life is a process, not a substance, and it is necessarily temporary. We are not the reason for the existence of the universe, but our ability for self-awareness and reflection makes us special within it.

So the Big Bang doesn’t actually mark the beginning of our universe; it marks the end of our theoretical understanding.

The mistake we make in putting emphasis on happiness is to forget that life is a process, defined by activity and motion, and to search instead for the one perfect state of being. There can be no such state, since change is the essence of life.

At the end of the day, or the end of your life, it doesn’t matter so much that you were happy much of the time. Wouldn’t you rather have a good story to tell?