Futility

Once you see the world in a different light, it's hard to go back. We are hand fed an outlook on life that is designed not to read between the lines of the universe, but simply to look at the pictures. This is for the safety of both ourselves and the world around us. It is the symphony of clockwork, completely self driven, self motivated, and self preserving. It has erupted from the minds of few to conquer the minds of almost all, and shows no signs of stopping its relentless crusade. It is the psychological moat that encircles our entire world, keeping us from harm while preventing us from freedom. Few attempt to cross its hazy channels. Some make it half way, only to discover that the water is too deep. They usually return, more fearful of the depths than ever. Sometimes they reach the point of no return and simply allow themselves to be cast back with the tide, altogether forgetting or perhaps intentionally escaping that which lies outside their own comfortable havens. Some attempt to cross and straight out drown, desperately attempting to comprehend the bottomless darkness before they are consumed by it. They are a reminder to us all of the Pandora's box we open by attempting to jump from the edge and find our way back.

Then there are those who accept the murky waters. They understand that you cannot cross the channel, you can only exist within it. They realize that success is not reaching the other side, success is simply acknowledging that the other side does not exist. It is an awkward place, to be sure, to find oneself lost in the water. On one side you look to the infinite horizon. It shares no answers, and echoes back only the questions you thrust upon it. On the other side, you see the world you left behind. You see the people who go about their lives oblivious to the moat that protects them from such troubled waters. But they never seem the same from those cold waters. They don't seem to even be real people anymore. They are simply the gears of the clock, each churning his or her own little revolutions, as they power their own little machine. What would you give to go back to that? What knowledge would you desperately upheave from the meticulous scribe that is your memory? Is it better to be a cog in the clock that tells the incorrect time, or the onlooker who knows it runs slow?

Eventually, turmoil turns to chaos, chaos turns to sadness, sadness melts to indifference, and indifference matures to understanding. You understand that in the end we all return to the bottom of life's boundless sea, regardless of whether we turn the clock or attempt to cast stones into its mechanism. The sea does not show mercy to those who attempt to understand it. It simply is. It is the wide mouth of time consuming the victims of fate. It is the empty wave that steals us from the shore. It is the monster that hides in the shadows of our understanding. Man, woman, or child, it marks you from the day you are born until the day you are unborn. And upon that day when your hourglass has lost its last ounce of sand, in an instant time will erase you. For a moment, however, the world will unveil its secrets to your eyes alone and you will weep your final tear as you embrace the fabric of the universe. And in that moment, that fleeting fraction of an instant, you will understand that it matters not in the slightest where you spend your days, whether they are wasted in the sea or relished on dry land. The last thought that transverses your fading mind will explain more than a lifetime of worthless neural impulses...futility