I am a retired senior citizen. With fewer distractions and obligations, the quiet has grown louder — and with it, a deep, gnawing question:  Does anything really matter? The answer I keep arriving at, disturbingly but persistently, is: No. Not really. Not in the long run. Empires rise and fall. The sun will burn out. Everything I ever did or thought or loved will be forgotten. Even the Earth itself will one day vanish. What’s the point of trying to live “well” when I’m a temporary blip, a speck of dust floating in a cosmic shrug? That’s where I am. This, I suppose, is what some would call an existential crisis . It feels more like existential clarity—and it’s unsettling. But I’ve been walking the Stoic path for a while now. I'm a Prokopton — a student of Stoicism, someone hopefully progressing toward wisdom, even if imperfectly. The Stoics never promised comfort. They promised coherence. A way to live honestly in a world that doesn’t owe us meaning or anything else. S...