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It may seem that since I believe there is no free will, there is no reason to live life.

But it’s not as if we don’t make choices. We still make decisions, and those decisions do indeed play a part in defining our lives; is is that we neither are conscious of the origins of those decisions, nor do we know what fate those decisions will ultimately lead us to. We don’t have free will in the sense that we don’t understand the grand scheme of the universe—the cascading effect of one event after the other.

So yes—we still must believe we are in control, believe that our choices influence the outcome of things, and play the role that has been assigned to us. It may be that our stories are illusions, confined to the limited scope of human understanding and emotion. But is that not good enough? Why do we consign ourselves to become dejected and disillusioned in the quest to find an ultimate truth, to understand the underlying purpose of all that proceeds through time and inhabits space in this universe, or all that exists beyond it? Why do we seek to comprehend things that are clearly beyond our understanding, let alone pity or lament our own existence because of it?