There is only now

I am the last of those who hears the stars sing, who watches the air dance in delight and who walks between the raindrops in the light.

Eternal night approaches; the abyss is at my feet. The Mists of Time have enveloped the Earth, as they have done before…and will do again. The blessing, or the curse of eternal return is upon us.

It is written in the stars if you dare to listen with your eyes, see with your ears…

As I stand here on this precipice I am at peace for I have knowledge: the knowledge that though I am the last at this time I am not the last for all time. This is not the first time that this experiment called life on earth has devolved into oblivion. From the ashes life will rise, to ashes it will return…to rise again.

Humanity has existed far longer than recorded in the annals of history of recent millennia. It has been made ash and returned innumerable times, each iteration as ignorant of the last as of the next. Each version has gnawed away at every limb until the rot within has decimated life on earth, only to bloom again from the ashes of what never was. All memory erased, no lessons carried forth, each incarnation destined, perhaps damned, to become as fated to be, ad infinitum.

But, this time is different.

For I did listen to the stars, and to the silence of the Mists of Time. In the infinite darkness, I found a light. I found the words for humanity to make a better life than any that has gone before. Words that if taken to heart can make every life a better one and therefore the world as a whole a better place. And if humanity can evolve, perhaps this will be the last time we destroy ourselves. Perhaps next time, we will cherish ourselves and each other and build a better world together.

And so, I will speak these words to the ether and bury the parchment upon which they are writ in blood here in the face of this indomitable mountain as I give myself to the mists. To the infinite darkness. May these words echo in the vast nothingness till the spark burns bright once again.

THERE IS ONLY NOW

The past is like the stone of the cliff at my back: you cannot change it. Learn from it but do not live there for life is not there. The future is like that which is cloaked in the mists gathered before me. It cannot be seen. Do not live there, for worrying about what may or may not be is a waste of precious life. That does not mean do not dream or do not prepare for tomorrow. It does not mean don’t learn as much as you can, or don’t work hard to be better, to give effort, to live well, to love deeply. It does not mean if you fall, do not get up. Get up. Fall and get up again. It does not mean forget about others. Indeed, if we cannot learn that we are all threads in the same beautiful tapestry, destruction will find us once again. It does not mean forget about tomorrow.

It means do not build a life in the mists.