We Were Once Here

By Cyril Joseph

We sat stewing amidst the rubble of all that we held dear, seething at the lack of control, fuming at our helplessness, overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all. We endure the torments of circumstance, the wrath of time, and the weight of being, each as inevitable as the other, waiting to engulf our insignificant desire for design and our vain need to be understood.

You wouldn’t dream of comparing this drive to the larger forces at play, yet it is what consumes us. It engrosses, devours, overwhelms and drowns us while the absurdity of it all engulfs us in entropy. Now I’m not saying that the universe is out to get us, but chaos always wins. The great thing about this utterly incomprehensible randomness is that in chaos, reality and your desires line up sometimes, but only a fool dares to expect it forever.

This certainly debunks notions of hope, expectations and structure, but it lends certain freedoms and an unquestionable lightness. Yet we continue to deceive ourselves, we get high on hope because it is so much easier. We play the fool wanting favours from fortune. If control doesn’t exist, we might as well distract ourselves right up until the impending crash.

Interestingly we still strive to create things that transcend our lives, to get a taste of immortality within our finite existence. We build structures that will outlast us, and cultures to eternalize our ways of life regardless of whether they may impede someone else’s. We selfishly expect and assume that people care, that we left a mark, that we made a difference. We crave to leave a trace in fear of oblivion, to add a semblance of meaning, to claim that we were once here.

By Cyril Joseph