Leonard’s 75th birthday was a quiet affair. A single candle flickered in a store-bought cupcake, its wax dripping onto the frosting as he sat alone in his kitchen. There were no calls, no visitors, just hte faint hum of the refrigerator and hte distant sound of traffic outside.
He had spent his life watching generations come and go, the cycle of birth and death spinning endlessly like a wheel no one could step off of. His own parents had long since passed, his siblings too, and his one brief attempt at a family — a marriage that dissolved before his 30th birthday — had left him with no children. He used to wonder if he’d regret that decision, but regret never came. Only relief.
Outside, the world groaned under its own weight. Another record-breaking heatwave, another war in a country no one bothered to understand, another scandal, another disaster. The news had become an endless loop of suffering. Leonard saw no reason to pretend it would ever get better. People were born, they struggled, the suffered, and then they died, only to be replaced by more of the same.
He had spent years trying to articulate this to others, but no one wanted to hear it. “That’s just life,” they’d say, as if that were an answer. As if that justified the whole cruel experiment. He had given up on trying to explain. The breeders had already won. There were billions of human crawling over a dying planet, convinced their existence was a gift rather than a burden.
Leonard leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath. The candle’s flame flickered, then went out on its own. He hadn’t even bothered to make a wish.
Sisyphus Shrugged 
“…billions of human crawling over a dying planet” Beautifully put horribly accurate.
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Humans think they’re so fucking special, and we’re going to be here forever and have unlimited resources. The whole “it could never happen to us” spiel. We’re not eternal. We’re all going to die, and those babies people keep popping out … they’re gonna die too. Unless you cure cancer, your name isn’t going to mean dick in the long run. Just another name on a tombstone.
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The only thing that separates us from the other animals is arrogance and over breeding.
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I just remembered this – Reek once asked me what my legacy would be, didn’t I want to make a mark on the world or be someone. I said I didn’t care about anything that happens after I die because I’ll be gone and nothing would matter. I’d be happy to have lived a life where I caused as little harm as possible and left friends with good memories. He then started going on about a monument to a person’s life, he seemed pretty obsessed with that.
It reminds me of that often misquoted and misattributed poem by Shelly, which turns up in Ridley Scott’s movie Prometheus oddly enough –
“I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Nothing will immortalise a person, nothing lasts, even the monuments of histories’ greats wither under time and the elements, you and I and the earthworm have an equal stake in mortality.
I don’t believe in a soul, though I don’t begrudge people their faith it seems that most people fear the ignominy of death especially the egotist, they rage about the fact that the reaper will end us all, and time will do the same to anything we have done. So I think all we can be or do is be decent to those we love and that’s what it’s all about. If we manage to touch others, make some good impression, pass on wisdom or even a joke then that is a great thing.
I’m your fan x
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