When you go out and look at the stars at night, supposing that you can actually get a decent glimpse of those little suckers...you might be awed, you might be bored, you might feel tiny and insignificant, or this thought may not even cross your mind. When I look up at the stars I see a strange irony. I see mankind's pollution of the air which has blotted out the night sky, hence isolating us from the world beyond. This makes us more and more ignorant, or if not ignorant, then at least forgetful of the fact that there are worlds beyond our own. To the average human mind, there is the solar syster, and anything beyond that is taking a step into the unknown. We have no idea of conception of what lies beyond our world or even our reality. Some beleive that there's an all powerful God watching over us, some might beleive that there are planets with intelligent life on them, I beleive that its best that we fragile little people try not to conceive what lies beyond. The fragility of the human mind means that to discover some terrible truth, like for instance, our solar system is really just a tiny glass ball inside the basket of a monstrous, all powerful being which enjoys eating these balls once a millenia, and ours is next...This is just an example but I beleive that there are things out there that man isnt meant to understand. For instance, the cosmos themselves destroy everything that human society stands for. By looking up at the stars you can realize that there very well could be no God and that therefore, everything you do is judged not by an all powerful being but by other human beings like yourself. Things like good and evil no longer apply to you any more, because these are concepts created by human beings to govern your behaviour. A Buddhist monk once said that all conflict amongst ourselves would cease if we could realise "the fact of our own death". Monks of this caliber used to go to funerals to watch the dead being burned so that they could frighten the bejeezus out themselves and gain a more objective focus of reality. Once you realize the same things as these Buddhist monks, then everything becomes transitory. You realize how utterly wasteful and stupid are wars and indeed all human conflict in general. But this realization could have a negative side as well. Once you realize the fact of your own death you may very well begin to think "whats the point of striving if I'm just going to die, whats the point of sacrificing and working hard and giving up time if in the end I'm just going to die and all this will have been worthless." While this is slightly exaggerated, this could very well be the attitude that someone who realizes this might think. Then of course you would come back to reality and then you would begin to think that it is all worth doing because it means that you could leave a legacy behind for others to follow. Ultimately, I think that some questions are too deep to ponder on for too long, the key is to just enjoy life and to use to fact that you'll one day die to increase your enjoyment of the time you have.