How do you judge me when I tell you I am a nihilist? It’s human nature to unconsciously judge, to form stereotypes, to shove people and things into neat little boxes and ignore anything that spills over. It makes our lives simpler, makes our world easier to understand. So how do you judge me when I tell you I am a nihilist? Which boxes do you shove me into?

Nihilism is the belief that life is meaningless, that we are meaningless - and why should we have meaning, one species on one planet in one solar system in one galaxy among billions and billions? It’s also the view that morality is nonexistent, or that it is artificial, a purely human construct - but for me, it is the latter.

My decision to label myself a nihilist was determined by my exposure to both science and religion. I’ve always known I was an atheist. Every year at Thanksgiving, we meet up with my Jewish extended family, including a rabbi and his daughter, whose marriage was arranged with a suitably Jewish man. On my grandmother’s side, my family is not Jewish, but firmly Christian. Her father was a pastor and her uncle Brother Roger founded the monasterial community of Taizé. I rejected both religions. To me, science was the pinnacle of human achievement, the idea of learning the nature of the world through methods that could be tested and proven simply made sense. For me, science and religion could never coexist, because science required proof and religion requires faith without proof.
   

I don’t demean religion, and in this time and place, my decision of atheism is readily accepted. While in the past non-belief was abnormal or criminal, today, the word “atheism” has lost its negative connotations. However, my beliefs ran far deeper than atheism. The meaninglessness of life, the nonexistence of morality - I felt I had no sense of spirituality, that the only possible way I could conceive to perceive the world was through the lens of scientific rationalism. And I was okay with that. In a way, nihilism was a bit like my religion, except a religion where there was no heaven or paradise or God, no moral righteousness to strive for, only the complicated meaninglessness of our small lives on this small planet.

It irked me - but did not surprise me - that some viewed nihilism in a negative light, Still,  why, when we live in a country that prides itself on freedom - freedom of religion, freedom of belief - why, when I look up the word nihilism, am I told it is synonymous with terms like “negativity” and “pessimism?” Because for me, a nihilistic view is not a pessimistic one. My meaningless does not bother me, and neither does the knowledge that I am not eternal, that neither my soul nor anything I create will last forever. As a nihilist, I believe that concepts like morality and beauty and happiness are human constructs, simply artificial, and are therefore irrelevant in the context of the universe. But we are not the universe, we are so, so much smaller. If we look at the universe on a smaller scale, a human scale, the concepts of beauty and happiness have meaning - it's just not universal meaning, rather a synthetic meaning that is bound up in our infinitesimal humanity. I acknowledge that in the context of humanity, beauty and joy exist - and despite their artificial nature and their subjectivity, that fact cannot be argued, because the effects they have on our thoughts and physical behaviors is present both in religion and in science. My nihilism is not the rejection of beauty and happiness, simply the rejection of universal beauty and happiness.

Although the views of nihilism may align with what some call cynicism and skepticism, for me nihilism holds no intrinsic negativity, despite its association with words like pessimism and people like Hitler (for yes, some have called Hitler a nihilist). I have come to accept that, just as atheism in the past, nihilism is surrounded by a maelstrom of negative connotations. So I've managed to separate nihilism according to books and the Internet from my nihilism. Although I label my system of beliefs nihilism, they are not any exact match to anyone else's nihilism. My nihilism includes the existence of happiness and beauty and morality, the very things nihilism is often criticized for undermining, it just doesn't accord them a universal meaning.

My nihilism is not bleak and emotionless. It doesn’t take anything away from my life. Rather, I feel liberated because of nihilism. The idea that all of my petty troubles will vanish in a blink of an eye is comforting to me and reassures me when feelings of sadness or anxiety threaten to overwhelm. Pain is just a transitory fact of life. The permanence of my eventual oblivion - death - has an inspiring effect, not a dissuading one. Everything I aspire to do in my life, I have to do now (or at least incredibly soon) because otherwise, when I die, there are no second chances.

For me, nihilism is glorious, I no longer care what others may think. Nihilism drives me to live my life to the fullest. It drives me to look at the world through two perspectives: a cosmic one, where I accept everything’s meaninglessness and my eventual end, and a human perspective, where I can appreciate the awe-inspiring existence of our world. I see nihilism as a way to get some of things religious people get from religion, while still holding on to my scientific outlooks. Thus, for me, nihilism is glorious.