Sobering

…..no one makes an indelible mark on humanity.  We only think we do.  Humanity is bigger than any single person.  Our lives—even those of mankind’s greatest recognized icons—are like sand castles on the beach, standing proudly for a little while before the next incoming tide washes them away.  But remember, the sand comprising a sand castle is not destroyed, it is simply redistributed elsewhere, and thankfully so are we.  No one ever truly disappears; their essence is merely reconfigured in a different form.  Trust me, we’ll always be around somewhere in the Universe.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…..no truer words were ever spoken.  Greatness is overstated, overrated, overly deified.  People are not connaturally great; it is the world around us that is.  People come and people go, but the world around us forever remains the same.  No one makes a permanent mark on the world, because humanity and permanence are diametrically opposite concepts.  The best anyone can hope to do is to try to positively influence the direction humanity is headed during that ludicrously brief sojourn of time one is granted an audition on Earth’s surface.  Any pretensions bigger than that—greatness, lasting marks, legacies, etc.—are nothing more than that…..hubristic pretensions.  The root word for pretensions is of course pretend, and those who ascribe anything more to mankind than temporariness and cosmic insignificance are just horribly naive pretenders lost in a world of make-believe…..