Soon We’ll All Be Dust
By: Samantha Morgan
Tags: Philosophy, Existentialism, Optimism, Nihilism, Short Read

Photo by Billy Huynh on Unsplash

I don’t understand why more people don’t realize soon we’ll all be dust. I mean really, this whole experience we’re having ends with each and every single one of us decomposing or being incinerated. It’s just a matter of time really, and now that we’ve entered into apocalypse territory it could be sooner than later. If you’re lucky it’ll be quick, but more than likely for many of us it will be long and slow as we watch our species and all the others slowly die. But whether our demise is near or far, the result is the same — dust. Dust for you, dust for me, dust for the whole planet when the sun runs out of hydrogen 5 billion years from now.

We’re so easily distracted from this truth. You’d think we could get along better knowing that all of our bones will soon be dust, yet we are so easily angered by one another. We get upset at the barista who’s taking her sweet ass time making our latte because we are late, and she should know we are late because this is New York and everyone is late. How does she not know this? And yet, how do we not know, how do we not feel in our bones that the Earth — the rock we grew from, is merely hurtling through space towards nothing, and that the all encompassing Universe doesn’t give one fuck or two about our latte, or our being late.

We’re all just walking around stressed about everything; the minutes, the hours, the weather, why Henry — that guy who’s an “actor” which really means “bartender” who we met on Tinder isn’t texting us back. And all the while no one is really thinking about how the remains of our body may sit on someone’s fireplace someday. If fireplaces should still exist in the not far off dystopian future we’re heading towards. It’s absurd. Like, instead of being upset at Henry, we could realize in reality he’ll be dead soon. And when we accept this, we can almost kind of forgive him. We can almost kind of sympathize with him, because we’ll be dead, too. Heck, maybe we should just show up at Henry’s “job” and tell him we love him and that we are here for him because our time is running out!

Okay, okay. Maybe we don’t need to be so dramatic about it, but then again maybe we do. Maybe if we understood that each and every single one of us is suffering from the same fate; that we are living creatures who know their own demise, we could better extend our grace and compassion to one another. Maybe if we took the time to truly listen to what the other soon-to-be-bag-of-dust is going through in front of us, we’d better understand why they are the way they are — and that it’s okay. Maybe if we realized that to be alive is both rare and abundant, and ending one moment at a time, we would value it in an entirely different manner.

I cannot be sure, all I know is that I think about my own demise quite often, thus forcing me to think about others’ as well. And in doing this I manage to find something I can share with each and every single one of my fellow humans. That we all live and we all die, and that in between these points there are much more important things than petty arguing, lattes, and fucking strangers from Tinder. And yet, these things are just part of the program as well. Perhaps everything has its weird meaningless little place wedged between what actually matters. Maybe nothing matters, except the things that do, and we get to decide those things. Perhaps to be aware of this is the key. But really, what do I know? I’m just billions of years of evolution like everything else who will soon be dust in the wind, just like you.