Everyone Eventually Forgotten

The fundamental question I have wrestled with for most of my adult life is, who or what am I? Even as a teenager, I'd lie awake at night wondering about it all. I got busy for a while as I developed a career, and I forgot about it, but today the question is back, and it dominates my mind most of the time. I'm satisfied, for the most part, that my awareness of myself is something other than my surface-level personality and physical organism. Whatever that is is unidentifiable to me, however. Whatever I appear to be to you and everyone else is irrelevant to that self of which I seem to be aware. Even so, and whether I like it or not, that persona is a part of me, occupies my mind and feels important. Late at night, though, when I consider the extent of “time” we have existed and the distinct likelihood that versions of us have come and gone many times, all of this drama seems irrelevant. The death of a person or millions seems irrelevant. The destruction of the rainforest and the pollution of the seas seem irrelevant.

The current version of us is apparently only 12,000 years on the Earth, according to the experts, and follows straightforward linear evolutionary progress. People like Graham Hancock are not buying that story, though. Homo sapiens have been around for 300,000 years but I wonder how many times civilisation has been destroyed. How many mass extinction events have there been in the 4.5 billion years since the Earth was formed, and how many versions of us have existed, evidence of which we'll never discover? A NASA-funded study suggests that over 32 advanced civilisations have come and gone before ours, and we'll likely disappear too.

None of this matters, though, not in the long term. No matter how emotions rise in use at the injustice of the world, none of it matters. In the life of one human being, the car crash that killed his family will have an impact that most of us will never know. In our lives now, the atrocities in Gaza matter and people everywhere are rising up. Yet, even in my outrage at these things, I wonder where was it at the murder and displacement of the Syrian people? Did I have any outrage for the people of Rwanda? Is there enough outrage in me for all of the injustices that exist in the world? Fatigue kicks in. The psyche finds a way to protect me from the worst of human behaviour, yet I can't ignore it. I don't want to, even though I know my life and my experience ultimately don't matter.

We care for people, and that's right and proper, even though it takes a lot sometimes to capture our attention, to shake it from bright shiny things and our own self-importance. In one thousand years, it will all be forgotten. A psychopathic society might annihilate a people and a culture, but five thousand years hence it will hardly be recalled. In the time after us, the seas will recover just as they did before. The rainforests will grow again taller than before, and nature will have reclaimed all of what we have built. Everything that we thought was important will be blowing around on the wind. The psychopaths and the saints won't even be a memory because there'll be no one left to remember them.

A human lifetime is like a millisecond flash of light compared to how long it all has been here and how long it will be here after we're gone. All of this drama appears irrelevant, and yet it is relevant, in this moment. So finding oneself in this apparently unavoidable dichotomy, what will you do–get sucked into every drama that presents itself? Best of luck with that, it will wipe you out. Therapists know this. Imagine the traumatic stories they are exposed to on a daily basis. How do you suppose they cope? Better find a way.

We are a primitive species with fancy tools and gadgets. We just lack the maturity to use them for the betterment of everyone. It seems to me that we have a long way to go emotionally and psychologically before we get it, and even if we don't, so what? Something else will emerge, hopefully with the benefit of our mistakes built in, because if that were not the case, what's the point of all of this? What sparked off this thought, actually, was a visit to the cemetery last week to have my mother's ashes interred in the family grave—all those headstones of all those important people. The bigger the monument, the more important that person was. Some of them falling down, plaques illegible, most everyone forgotten. I remarked to myself, what a laugh.

Look at the corner where the road meets the path. Weeds have grown on the concrete. If you didn't cut your grass in a year, it would become a meadow, just what it wanted to be in the first place. In the absence of humans, within one hundred years, the roads will be overgrown, and young forests will have sprouted on the motorways. So whatever I am, whatever you are, we are temporary and ineffective, and yet there is something else more enduring that doesn't seem to get too stressed out by our drama. Whatever I am, it seems I exist for a while. There is something going on where I am. I'm not sure you do, exist, I mean, and I can't possibly know for sure; my best guess is that you do. We'll both end up in the ground regardless, and everyone you know will end up there too. That thought stirs something in me, an urgency, a sinking feeling, knowledge that we're all in the queue and how far from the top, unbeknownst to me.

Better do that thing, plant those veg, bake that bread, have some fun, give something, anything, to someone else, even if it's only a smile and hello. Find something to feel good about. After all, I firmly believe, and I will not be moved from this position, that there is as much good in the world as there is not. We just have to tune ourselves to it.