What is the single most important question in life?

Life is complicated, but it seems the most profound and deepest truths are also the most simple. Strip away all the excess, and we are left with the most essential essence.

I have been thinking through this question. The more I try to strip away all the excess, the more it feels like the closest answer to the truth is:

“Are you comfortable with yourself?”

. . .

We are social animals living in a dynamic world, surrounded by other animate and inanimate things.

But in this thought experiment – when we strip away the excess, what remains is that we all live alone. We all experience life alone.

From the moment of birth, to the moment of death. Everything you experience is experienced only by you.

What we think, what we feel, how we feel, what we experience. Everything is felt only by you.

. . .

There are two parts of the world.

1) Your mind. This is where we live the entirety of your life.

2) The external world. This is everything else.

. . .

You live within the bubble of our own mind.

After stripping away all the excess, we are left to think about two of the most distilled thoughts – who am I, and what do you think of who I am?

There is a spectrum with two outcomes.

. . .

So are you truly comfortable with yourself?

If no, then nothing external matters.

Nothing from the external world will fill that void. You can find peace only from within.

If yes, then nothing else matters.

Truly nothing else matters.

. . .

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

– Blaise Pascal, 1654.

. . .

“Life is a single player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and no one cares. Before you showed up nobody cared. It’s all single player.”

– Naval Ravikant.