It’s always the same beginning for me. Morning comes and with it, the rush of merriment that suffuses my mind. Is this happiness I feel a catalyzing agent? Will it germinate into something productive today? Or will it taper off into nothingness, as it did the day before? What is it that I am feeling? An overactive hormonal reaction? Maybe my plasma membrane is particularly effusive today and is gushing with a deluge of serotonin? Or perhaps it’s a message from an omnipotent entity; that everything is going to be alright. But never mind that. I shouldn’t overthink it. However, like a certain serpentine reptile, these introspective (or corrosive?) thoughts always worm their way into the black matter of my brain and coil around the cloudy smidgen of quietude that I occasionally experience. But yeah, never mind that. Need to shower. Need to eat breakfast. And need to go to work.
Every day, I pass the same tree. I always wonder how it came to be. The process of it all. A seed that germinates within the ground. Nourishes itself and sprouts into a bountiful adult. The apples that hang from its branches. Bright red. Healthy. Full of nutritious vitamins. Someone will either pick and eat them. Or they will shrivel and rot. All life will escape from them. But their corpses will fall and feed the earth. And yet they won’t utter a word of complaint. They can’t since they never had a voice. We do, don’t we? We talk, complain, laugh, moan, ramble and scream. And one day, those screams will stop. Our corpses will feed the Earth. Our remains laid bare to whimsy of nature. Our bodies desecrated, our bones and flesh becoming a boon to insects and animals. And we won’t utter a word of complaint. Our bodies will nourish every living creature that subsists within this plane of existence. We will give indiscriminately. We will become the embodiment of love.
It makes me sad. Melancholic yet strangely, profoundly diffused. If I die and forever fade into the ether, I won’t get angry and fray my nerves anymore. I will never feel sad. I will never feel anxious about my future, paying my bills, fixing that broken thing, meeting that deadline, icing that ache in my knee. I will never feel any of these things again. But I also I won’t ever feel happy again. Or enjoy the warmth of my loved ones. See their smiling faces. Feel their love and kindness. Feel my mother tousling my hair. My father’s bear like hugs. My sister lovingly annoying me. I will never feel any of these things again. But maybe it won’t be that bad when it all ends. Maybe its like going into a dreamless sleep. And yet, like itch at the back of my mind, this feeling of dread flares up, and forces me to hold on. However, there is nothing I can do but keep on going, onwards to nothingness.
