The sun is setting on your time on this planet. You have no family. How do you spend your last day before it’s all over? Do you do something familiar and comforting? Or do you try something new – something you’ve always wanted to do? The possibilities are endless. You could rob a bank and toss the money out into the streets of a poor neighborhood. You could indulge in every sensual pleasure you can find in your short time. You could sit quietly to reflect on your time.
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photo credit: Alex E. Proimos
jbmoss Says:
The end – or is it?
Every 600,000 years or so, life recreates an existence on this planet, or so it seems. The mysteries of past civilizations are found in isolated places on the planet; Easter Island comes to mind, as does Stonehenge and the South American hieroglyphs that spread for miles across the flat landscape there.
My task, then, as I see it, is to try to leave an indication of my own existence, a mark that time will not obliterate, something of meaning that can be understood eons into the future. I look around, scanning the horizon without seeing it, thinking about what lasts, what doesn’t, what erodes and what remains.
I really have no time to do this, no time at all…
I imagine how to scratch something meaningful onto the face of the earth, something that will survive cataclysmic events and the erosion of time itself. I imagine the chance discovery of my attempt to give meaning to my time frame; some creature must be smart enough to recognize my attempt for what it is, simple altruism to the extreme.
Do I, can I, preserve all of the knowledge of my time, all of the meaning brought to the fore at this instant in time? Or do I simply wait for the end, like everyone else before me on this earth? What would you do?
JBMoss ~ Dies Veneris xx Junius MMCCCXXXII
Posted on May 8th, 2011 at 10:30 am