Changing Places

Running my hands through the sand as I gather my thoughts, I feel relaxed and peaceful. It’s a warm night; humid but with a refreshing breeze. Pleasantly detached from my usual pragmatic conscience, I have been watching capricious flames dance above the burning logs for some time now. I am mesmerised by the seemingly unpredictable flames, and the incalculable pattern that this unremitting emancipation of energy exhibits. I find something beautifully enigmatic about this inconsequential infernal chaos. Each flame is distinctly autonomous, and each embarks on a unique and frantic dash towards the night sky – an alluring destination if only it were attainable.

A dazzling full moon illuminates the tranquil sea, and an ocean of stars gleam and glimmer in mysterious splendour, glistening in defiance of their distant isolation. I find myself gazing into the deepest universe, a porthole to the very beginnings of time. I am overcome with a sense of fragility, and I begin to reflect on the somewhat neonatal frailty of our planet and species. Indeed, humans have existed for only two hundred thousand years or so. Yet, given that the universe is estimated to be some fourteen billion years old, human existence is but a blip in the history of time.

As I have watched the fire many thousands of flames have been born, and all enjoyed a brief existence before perishing within a split second. It seems obvious to me that each flame is too short lived to be significant to anything other than itself. I cannot help but draw parallels between the evanescent flames and the relative infancy of our species compared with the universe itself. If human existence relative to the age of the universe were represented by a flame in the fire I have been watching for the past hour, the flame would exist for barely one twentieth of a second before vanishing; too short for my anthropoid eyesight to even notice.

When we as a species eventually and inevitably perish, our footprint in time may be infinitesimally small. The cosmos will continue, unrepentant and unaware of our brief emancipation; of our own inconsequential infernal chaos.

But does this matter? On reflection, I do not believe it does. Am I happy? Ironically, I have never felt so blissful and yet I am alone, thousands of miles away from home with not a soul aware of my circumstances.

Am I significant? Perhaps it is the infinitesimal things in life that matter.