How to avoid getting depressed by our inevitable oblivion?

Let's get right to it. What oblivion am I talking about? Thermodynamic Equilibrium of the Universe, or if you feel like romanticizing it, “The Heat Death of the Universe.” The name of the game is Entropy. It always increases, described beautifully by the second law of thermodynamics, and also with Ludwig Boltzmann's equation, S = K logW. Let me just say right here, that that equation is very elegant, totally one of my favorites.

It is fair to note right here that Heat Death is just one of several plausible outcomes of the Universe, however other ones like the Big Crunch cause the same oblivion-related anxiety. So I just happen to like Heat Death more to explore these feelings and offer a point of view that might help fight these depressing facts.

I would love to write 10000+ words on how it is going to happen, but I don't have the knowledge to describe it that thoroughly without getting many things wrong. I am not a Physicist yet. So, keeping that in mind, here is an oversimplified version of that paper I am going to write once I have my Undergraduate degree in Physics (or possibly after my Master´s degree in Cosmology), written by a high school-graduated guy with a passion for reading Physics stuff.

Thanks to entropy, in other words, chaos, all matter in the Universe will slowly decay and transform into energy. We know, thanks to the first law of thermodynamics, that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed, ergo, we are dealing with a finite amount of energy in our universe.

Right now, things can happen, you can charge your phone, or exist by transforming carbohydrates and sugars into ATP within your cells. You can see the Sun, whose energy is caused by nuclear fusion in its core. But, every process turns a little amount of energy to radiation, which is then lost. That is the chaos of the system.

Now, bear with me. Since every process in the Universe contributes to the chaos (entropy) of the Universe, in an inexplicably long amount of time—calculations estimate it will occur in about a googol years—all energy in our Universe will be radiation; even Black Holes will be evaporated by then due to Hawking Radiation. The Universe will literally be dead, forever. Nothing will ever change again, it will be the same temperature everywhere, and that is pretty much it.

In the end, every mistake you made, every decision you took, everything you did, essentially, will not matter. (Now, I know there is, theoretically, a chance that a small decrease in entropy could happen due to a spontaneous quantum tunneling that could lead to a literal fresh start, a brand new Big Bang from there. But that is well outside the scope of this essay. I want to get on to the philosophical side of this.)

A googol years, 10^100, is a pretty long time. So long that calling it “forever” seems fairly appropriate. So, why would you care about this? Why would this cause you depression and anxiety? If a googol years fail to make you feel like that, let me bring those numbers down a little. In about 4 Billion years our Sun will die, but even before that, in 300 million years or less, the land on Earth will become pretty inhospitable. If we have not become a Type-III civilization by then, that will, most likely, be the end of humans.

So, I could even write about how a 100-year human life has only 5,200 weeks in it, and that much of that is lost to sleep, and many mundane activities. It seems almost impossible to avoid oblivion. If you are lucky, you may be remembered a few decades after your death. If you are extremely lucky, you may be remembered a few centuries after it. there are 7 billion of us now, so the chances you are remembered a few millennia into the future are really close to zero.

As Banksy said “they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” This keeps me up at night, it makes me think, constantly, about how I can be fooled into thinking that nothing I do matters. Because in the end, it really doesn't, but that's true about me, my entire species, and its civilizations, ideas, landmarks, lives, and so on. Oblivion is inevitable, but I, in fact, like it that way. Knowing that the end is inevitable, sets me, and all of us for that matter, free. We are totally free to do whatever we want, to stand up for whatever we believe in, to fight for the dreams we think are the best for us, and to chase the life we choose for ourselves.

Yes, at the end we are dust. Our words will be said for the last time, our pyramids will be admired for the last time, our songs will be listened to for the last time, and we will be for the last time. But in the meantime, we are here. We are real. I am real. Our experiences may not matter to the Universe, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't matter to us, or to you. You have some time to spend, doing whatever you want in this world. Do not waste it feeling pointless in the ultimate fate of the Universe. Use it to make yourself happy, bonus points if you make other people happy as well. You have received a blank space in the Universe. It will be filled, with you or with something else, but since you are here, go ahead, fill it yourself.