My Epiphany

My epiphany started with my nose. I was awake in bed, late at night. I was rubbing my nose, thinking about how ridiculous it was that I had a fleshy appendage projecting from my face.

My next thoughts concerned my ears, two more fleshy appendages, and the tufts of dead cellular gunk coming out of my scalp and face. It was like I was stuck in a clown suit. Just look at the way I walk. Loping forward on preposterous limbs, like a funny little animal.

It slowly began to dawn on me how deeply raw a deal is life.

Being embodied in material form is a staggering humiliation. I am a greasy, inadequate, fragile, demanding thing. Every day I must consume other organisms and extrude smelly wastes from my abdomen. The entirety of my will and boundless idealism is encapsulated in a bloody mass of tissue, one that will shortly shrivel up and die.

I got to thinking about how, ever since I was born, I’ve been marched relentlessly into a mysterious future known only for its cruel surprises and guarantee of annihilation. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m forced forward ceaselessly like a prisoner in a death march.

And while this has all been going on, while I’ve been at the mercy of a tyrannical series of events, I’ve also been at the mercy of space, hurdling along on a grain of sand through an endless, frozen void. I’ll never escape. The proud city I live in is shifted away from the sun every year, thrust through months of freezing weather, then shifted back again to endure a series of gassy storms. I don’t even know where I am.

I don’t know much else, either, about the workings of the world around me. No one can provide me with a convincing explanation. My search for the truth will be frantic and fruitless, and will nonetheless consume me until my consciousness is summarily snuffed out.

In the morning, I went to the laundromat. To get to the laundromat, I had to lope along on my limbs, moving my physical self across the frozen ground, buffeted by cold wind. Going to wash my freshly-deteriorated clothing, I thought about my endless struggle against entropy. Everything is constantly falling apart.

Everything I love and cherish will perish. All of my works will crumble into dust. The cognitive dissonance that these realities ask me to maintain if I am to remain even halfway content is unbearable. What do I have to be grateful for? That my life is infinitesimally less miserable that those of millions of others?

Life is a cruel trap. It’s like being on a sinking ship, lost at sea, all the while compulsively climbing higher and higher into the rigging, knowing full well the futility, screaming “why? why?” at a silent infinity.

It’s time humanity considered seriously taking on these constant humiliations. I envision a day when we are free from the constraints of time, space, uncertainty, physical embodiment and entropy.

The day will come, in the future.