# Some Great Reward

or, ‘How I Learnt to Stop Worrying By Realising Nothing Matters (And That’s Okay! 👌)’

Daniel Cameron Bush

9th of April 2026

I think the blend of Buddhism and nihilism I have adopted has proven to be overwhelmingly positive for me. It’s already shown itself to be more useful, practical and believable than any other religious doctrine or philosophy I’ve attempted to adopt throughout my life.

Unlike a rigorous belief system, it’s more of a means than an end. A means for and of itself – to bring you back into the present moment. It isn’t a worldview so much as it is a toolkit, with no value in and of itself, that allows me to live my life with presence of mind and deliberation. The word ‘allows’ is problematic because it implies that the belief system (which itself is really a lack of a belief system) is the agent bestowing the gift of ‘permission’ onto me. That isn’t what is happening at all.

What’s actually happened is that I have realised I’ve been operating on the assumption that 1) I’m going somewhere 2) I’m on a journey 3) there is any possible sort of ‘progression’ to be made 4) there’s some sort of destination or attainable ‘goal’ we could ever hope to achieve.

Not only this, I’ve been clinging (upadana) onto these assumptions for dear life. I’ve been seeking salvation through them and have been left suffering (dhukka) when I haven’t found it. The realisation is that lofty ideals like ‘enlightenment’ aren’t far away, nor locked behind levels of shady esoteric tradition. Neither are we granted enlightenment at the mercy of a celestial being superior to ourselves.

The answer to our woes is very simple. It is the complete undoing of the question itself.

We seem so condemned to repeat the cycle of inner suffering because we feel so inclined to keep on clinging. Everyone around me, including friends, family, acquaintances and even my enemies keep on clinging too, operating under exactly the same assumptions and mental conceptions. We all naively think that any of this matters, that it will all pay off in the end, that we just have to keep going – because even if it doesn’t make sense at the moment, one day we will get there.

These mental conceptions all seem to focus on ‘must’, ‘ought’, ‘could’ and ‘should’ – the modal verbs that express obligation and most immediately seek to hijack our attention.

“I ought to be doing this by now.”

“I really should be thinking about this.”

“What would so-and-so think?”

The nagging feeling of obligation, this sense of ‘duty’, ‘vocation’ or some ‘greater purpose’ is pervasive. It’s absolutely everywhere in our culture. They are ideas programmed into us from a very early age, baked in to every story.

We act upon them compulsively and although we may satiate our compulsion for a while, it will always move on to the next thing, bringing with it that familiar pain, longing and dissatisfaction.

The same eternity of pain, over and over and over again. You could even say samsara, maybe.

I have come to the conclusion that nothing has any intrinsic value. Not me, not you, not my family, nor my friends, not the animals nor the plants. Human beings aren’t some sort of miracle. The evidence seems to point to the fact we are actually more likely a cosmic accident: a complete fluke. Our existence and everything else is completely inconsequential. We are here one day, then buried in the dirt like landfill the next. There is no inherent shame, nor pity in this – the negativity we feel when contemplating our death is our own clinging.

It used to make me feel sad but I realise now this feeling, too, is worthless. It’s a passing feeling. Like everything else, it is temporary. Impermanent. Fleeting. It comes, I experience it with presence of mind and it goes. I don’t chase it, nor do I push it away. I accept it as it comes and let it go as freely as it came.

This feeling was just my ego, my ignorant sense of separate self – so cocksure of its own importance – attempting to cling to self-preservation and the overarching, false sense of security that it could possibly ever prevent its own demise.

It’s completely irrational. It assumes the concept of ‘demise’, but there is no demise in order for my ego to protect itself from. I’m experiencing all of these thoughts and feelings, some positive, some negative, but are the thoughts separate to the thinker? Where is the thinker? The more I contemplate these things, the more immediately aware I become that there is no ‘I’. There is no ego, there cannot possibly be, because there is no separate self.

I exist, sure, in that I'm a complex biological computer capable of moral agency. But where does 'Daniel' begin and where does he end? As I keep on inquiring, I find more relations, more process, more borrowed matter and inherited language. Atoms that were once stars. Words that were once somebody else's. A body that will return, without ceremony, to the same earth everything else returns to. I am not separate to the Sun, nor am I separate to the Earth, nor the sea. As much as my great-great-great-great-grandmother is a projection of me into the past, I am a projection of her into the future. Everything contains within it everything else. There is no edge to find. No boundary where I stop and the rest of it begins. There realisation is that there is no microcosm, there is no macrocosm; no divine, nor profane; no rising and no falling.

Everything is because everything else is.

None of this comes from a place of apathy. It's not that I don't care about anything — there are plenty of things I care about very deeply. It's precisely because I choose to care — not because I must, nor because I ought to, nor because some kind of celestial ledger demands it and then holds me to account — that caring means anything at all. I have realised that obligation hollows everything out. Choice, real choice, made in full awareness that nothing compels it, is the only thing that doesn't.

And here, quietly, without making a fuss about it, the nihilism and the Buddhism have met.

If nothing has intrinsic value, then value can’t possibly be something you find. It isn't hidden behind correct behaviour, accumulated merit nor the right philosophical framework.

It arises, moment to moment, from attention itself.

From being here, fully, without the noise of where you're 'supposed' to be going.

🪷

I am, because you are.

— Buster