I probably won’t
live to see them go through anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
I can’t remember ever being in denial. Nor can I remember
ever not being depressed.
Not depressed because I’ve finally accepted that I’m mortal,
because I never denied it. Depressed because I, like most people, wasted my
life doing what I had to do instead of what I should do.
On the rare occasions when I’ve been happy, I knew it
wouldn’t last. But that didn’t depress me, because I've always known happiness isn’t the
norm, for me or for anyone else. I was depressed because so much of our
unhappiness is of our own doing.
Because I’ve always known
that happiness is rare, and doesn’t last, I've enjoyed it when it did come. Others are unhappy because they think happiness is the norm, or should be. They
even imagine their happiness will be eternal, because they’re immortal. Surely
this delusion is the cause of their unhappiness.
Even though I’ve always been aware of my mortality, and
accepted it, I now feel myself moving towards
the acceptance of something I couldn’t before. It’s not my mortality, but that
of my species.
I tried to make the world better. Others tried to
do the same, and failed. I should have known I would, too. From the crooked
timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
Humans have been destructive and self-destructive for as
long as we’ve been a species. Repeatedly we've built a civilization and then destroyed
it, like a small child building a tower for the pleasure of knocking it down. In
the past, we've always built a new civilization from the ruins of the old. Now,
for the first time, we have the power to not only knock the tower down, but
grind its bricks into a dust so fine that no new bricks can be made from it. All
that will remain is sand on an empty beach beside ahe eternal sea.
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