Not even a shadow

 Subject: Not even a shadow



What insignificant creatures we are,  Hollowed out opportunists with few architectural masterpieces to litter our skyline, no Shakespearian sonnet, no figurative  life defining achievement, only the dross left in the waste disposal truck when our belongings are emptied from the house.

Sure we are more than just our achievements, we are an amalgam of our individual  experiences for which, in various ways we list those experiences as being special and remark on them as if they we’re important. Children of course are our most important achievement, perhaps a little cash in the bank, a house and car but after years of breathing the air and chewing the cud, it’s a salutary fact that we are quite insignificant given our brain’s ability to conjure up so much more.

Reading of the Dutch’s pioneering discovery of New Zealand and mans relentless urge to explore one is always in awe at the remarkable gains in knowledge. From Einstein and Newton  to Maxwell and Rutherford. From Aristotle to Kant, from Heisenberg to Schrödinger, the music of Chopin, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, these creative talents shadow us forever but only emphasise our own obscurity.

But it’s enough. So long as you have chosen a life in which you have objectively done your best and importantly,  no one deliberate harm.

The period on life’s stage, under the lights as it were is only a detail but it’s all we have. Even at our funeral talk will soon the turn to tomorrow but it’s a tomorrow in which we have no place ‘yet only yesterday’ we placed ourselves high in importance.

Perhaps we should place ourselves at the mercy of religion, to buy ourselves more time, or take up a philosophical claiming rebirth.

“With threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise,  one thing at least is certain - time flies, one thing is certain and the rest is lies - The flower once blown for ever dies”.

Once we listened to our mothers and then our fathers, our brothers and sister, uncles and aunts but now we listen to strangers broadcasting their ideas through the media platform and television channels 24/7. You wake up to them  the cackle of their voices shamelessly selling their interpretation of their truth whilst we become further and further submerged in their conflicting stories. A plague on their house I say.