Sometimes it feels as if we are each destined for greatness. But life, relationships and circumstance forces us to settle into mediocrity. There is no greater tragedy than the human soul. It suffers because it cannot soar. It slices itself into pieces for the sake of others’ happiness. It suppresses its laborious spirit to do menial work which doesn’t change the world or carry one’s name into the future.
What will the future remember us as? Just another set of numbers? Ten million lived in that city. Seven billion were alive in 2015. Two million used Facebook every day of 2017. Six hundred worked in that company on that date. What is the point of living like a number? Where is the infinity which is we promised ourselves when we came to this life? Even the daughter of a refugee dreams of a life in which more than a few dozen know her name. Why, then, do those of us who have it in our hands to let go of this world, which will breed nothing other than more of us, always choose to let this pitiful existence bleed us dry? Why do we settle for the nothingness that defines the majority of us? Why is each one of us not a gem? Is the human race nothing but a few geniuses dispersed amidst the 99.7% who are nothing more than monkeys with keyboards?
We are never solving cancer with our day-to-day work. Nor are we exploring the farthest reaches of human knowledge with every step. Much like clerks copying notes for more important personnel, a majority of us in the workforce are simply providing services for the benefit of others. Our personal motto is nonexistent and the companies we work for are nothing more than money-making machines. Why? Why is there just one champion of the human spirit in each generation? Why is everything you do every day not the stuff of legends? We live in the most prosperous of times. Yet our acts are nothing but selfish attempts at elongating our present instead of forcing the future to remember our existence.
We’ve seen that cities come and go, empires rise and fall, humanity picks up the pieces and moves on. Can you truthfully say that if today is doomsday, those who pick up the pieces will pick up your name as one of those who changed humanity? Will they teach your life to their children as a lesson in the eternity of the human spirit?
In other words, as of today, are you a part of the infinity or the infinitesimal?