On New Year’s Eve, Katie and I were driving to my friend’s place for a party. My mind tends to wander when I drive, and I come up with all sorts of weird thoughts…weirder than my usual thoughts, and my usual thoughts are already packets of mud and glitter that nobody understands.
The universe is 14 billion years old. Step back far enough to take it in, and it’s like 2016 never happened. Step back further, our lives never happened.
Humanity is about 200k years old. it’s like people never existed. We’re a blip, an anomaly. Archaeologists from some advanced species a billion years from now probably won’t even notice us.
Hell, it’s possible that other civilizations have been on Earth, but they lasted for such a short time that we’ll never know that they were here. Maybe there was a giant plant society that died out, or talking dinosaurs. Who the hell knows? They’re all blips. They never mattered. Neither do we, and 2016 is a blip of a year in a blip of a civilization in a blip of a species.
I feel better now. BRING ON INSIGNIFICANT 2017!!!
PS: I wish that I could step that far back. But scale matters, and I can’t see beyond the small scale. All I see are actions that cause dramatic reactions and pain. I know logically that it doesn’t matter, but I’ve not logical. I’m human, and that sucks.
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