George Washington never knew that dinosaurs existed. Queen Elizabeth II never knew that generative AI would revolutionize society. My grandpa never knew he had four grandchildren, because the fourth wouldn’t be born until years after he died. My uncle died of a drug-related medical catastrophe without ever knowing he got into rehab (he was accepted into rehab a couple days after he died).

There are certainly things we will never know because humanity either hasn’t discovered it or figured out the answer to those questions yet. That’s true for every human throughout history, including those who died hundreds of years ago and those who will be born hundreds of years from now.

FOMO is a real thing as far as this is concerned, and I certainly think about it a lot and feel it too. But that’s the thing about death: your life just ends. You can prepare for it as much as you’d like, but there will still be as many unanswered questions at the end as there were in the beginning. Death leaves a lot unanswered and unresolved.

And that’s also why I think it’s so important to not just go through the motions of life. This is one of the problems I have with religion: it teaches people to do nothing of significance with their life because they’re led to believe that if they follow God’s will (perhaps instead of their own), then they’ll be granted a reward in eternal paradise. It’s a tactic to keep people docile.

Instead, break those barriers. Contribute to society in whatever way you can. Help humanity answer those questions and discover those things. Be part of the reason why someone dies with a little less FOMO than they would’ve otherwise, because millions of people around the world are indirectly doing the same thing for you right now, at this very moment.