Who believes....

[Donovan]

A friend of mine put this on Facebook and there is very little I disagree with in it:

“Your children will remember you. Their children may. To the next to come, you are only a name, and to the ones after that, a few old pictures, perhaps, or a line in a record. Within a length of time that will barely equal the span of your life, you will be no more.

We have nothing that abides. Not even ourselves. The little eddy we create by our movement, mostly unthought, is soon lost in the vast flood of all that is. We are of little consequence. Some names remain, but the flood washes around them, erodes them, and in the end, wears them down to common sand. At the last, all will be gone, even the great names will be steadily erased, and finally, this little race of self-important, self-aware apes will be gone and forgotten.

There is no one watching. There is no lawgiver, no maker of fairness, no justice to make. There is no eternity, just a brief, confusing, bright, loud flash that shatters the darkness that surrounds us, and then fades into an echo, then into the silence of the infinite dark. We are born, we see and hear and feel and suffer and hope, and are gone, with nothing lasting to mark our passing. We do not know each other, we do not command ourselves, we are born in fear, live in ignorance, and die alone.

In this single moment in the light, amidst the panicked confusion caused by desperately needing to believe the delusion that we matter, we are given one thing in an infinitely small ration – time. In this mayfly instant, all the living we can do will and must be done. All that we have, all that we are is on fire, soon to be nothing more than cold ashes.

So no, I do not have time to hear of your plans to save the world, it cannot be saved. I do not have time to listen to your schemes, they are written in water. I have no time for your vengeance, your passion, your pleas or your indignation.

I have time for one thing. In this single breath, I have only this: I give you my love. You do not matter to the universe, to time, or to distant gods, but you do matter to me. We are in this moment, and in it, I would, even as the world burns down around us, lighten your heart. It is meaningless, perhaps, but it is mine to give. I say this – I have seen beauty in you. A moment of harmony, a glimmer of light, an inexplicable moment of joy caused by the fact that you were here, being you, in this moment.

Life is not enduring enough to have great value, and the love we share is as temporal as we are. But in this moment, this now, you are here. And all the gold in the world, useless to us, the soon to be obliterated as if we never were, is nothing compared to this instant of joy. I could spend the rest of my days in chasing bubbles in a stagnant pond – fame, money, respect, and not experience this again.

We are all on our way to the executioner's block. There is no hope of appeal, no miracle, no mercy to be found. But as we rode together toward that end, you smiled at me. And in that moment, death had no sting, oblivion held no terror.

This moment is. And while it will not be remembered, and it will not change the world, it is. That is all the eternity we can hope for. It is all the eternity we need.”