How insignificant we are

I sit by the sea. Watch the bright stars in the dark night sky. I see crabs fetching food. They walk sideways.

Wonder what they think about us?

I see all this the way I can. How does an ant see the Universe? Can it feel the cruelty when I put it on an electric heater to watch it dance? Does it realize that it was my hand that put it there? Does it curse me?

I have been so cruel when I was a child. I found pleasure in others’ pain. I knew the ant I put in the spider’s web could do nothing to me. The way I was scared of the bullies in my school.

Was it the ant’s fate that I had to feed it as easy prey for the spider?

They live in perfect co-operative colonies. Just like bees. And after years of cultural and social revolutions, where are we? Riding the third wave, afraid to fall off. Afraid to let go. Clinging to all that we think are immortal.

We still debate about collectivism and individualism. Where is the utopia that we feel on earth? Are those recurring childhood dreams all recollections of immortality as Wordsworth once put it?

Some of us came close to realizing their own utopias. But instead of following their path, we made them gods. And we left all that they saw, preached, and practiced into books. Books to read when we feel we have not read them for a long time. When we grow old and are afraid of death lurking around the corner.

We work in matchbox buildings and live in matchboxes as well. Why do environmentalists live in cement houses?

Few live out in the open. Among wilderness. We think they are backward tribes.

We make music, we create art, we sing. We write treatises, theses, get PhDs, and then float in the air. We stop walking.

We think walking on two feet is superior to walking on four.

We rule. We think.

We kill. For taste, for fashion. And then we become food for worms.

We still can’t define life. We still don’t know death. But we’ve gotten to some natural laws. Some of us even don’t care for the perfection of it all. In nature, nothing is wasted.

What are we when come face-to-face with the supreme force which designed a thumb and not an extra toe?