And One Day This Too Shall Pass

Crickets and Stars

I’ve really been into the conversation around human extinction lately. I’m not sure why it cropped up now. Though its probably been rattling around in my head for a while under different names. I think in the end, the only way the planet is going to ever survive long term is if we leave it, or die out.

And we seem to be well on the track to that second option.

But I don’t know, I don’t feel upset about that idea. Just kind of comforted by it? Its like watching a clock tick, or a dial wind out. Everything passes, and humanity will eventually pass as well.

Things cycle, and its arrogant of us to think that we are not somehow part of that cycle. That we are the end, the pinnacle. That our societies will somehow continue no matter what.

When societies rise and fall all the time.

Even in our daily lives, our continued existence, we cycle. Through common connections, relationships, sleep, wakefulness, life stages. More similar to one another than we think, but separate enough to feel apart.

I think about space a lot lately, about the universe. About how tiny we are, and how the vast expanse doesn’t, in the end, give two shakes about any of us. Its too busy turning out dark matter and making stars. Too busy just being the universe.

And that’s ok. Its oddly kind of liberating.

The idea that all the things we do, in the end, doesn’t even make a dent on that kind of a scale. A footnote, a burp in time. A shining lovely flash of all the thoughts and feelings, and writings, and ridiculous, wonderful shit we’ve ever made.

Gone.

But the things we do matter to us. It gives us meaning in an otherwise absurd kind of reality. And that is important. For the day to day, for our connections, for our lives.

Because time will tick on regardless of us. Things will grow up to replace or displace us. Everything will change, and re-grow, and die, and continue.

Even if we can’t quite see it on that scale.

Maybe that’s why I like to visit open spaces, and the edges of places. Fields, oceans, rocky shores, clearings. It gives me piece of mind, a quieting from the noise that lives around us everyday. Its a way to feel just a small part of that wide expanse.

To feel humbled before time.

To feel at home in silence.