55 - We could learn a thing or two from animals.

Humankind sucks.

We are afflicted by money. We scam, exploit and blackmail people. We spend prolifically and worse yet, unequally, and worse yet, insatiably. Basic necessities such as food, shelter, sanitized water and health have a price? Even if we have money, we are trapped by our finances in that we must shape our lives’ paths within the limits of our pecuniary ability. And it breaks your heart to know that you cannot devote all of your money to worthy causes, even though people out there are impoverished and undernourished, dirty and suffering, even though you are not a callous person.

We, as humans, commit the sin of cupidity. We have the liberty to waste our days away sitting on a couch, stare at a useless contraption known as a television all day, and eat nothing but greasy takeaway pizza. We adorn our homes with non-biodegradable plastic ornaments and toxic paintings. Decorations… jeez, we are vile.

We can never agree upon anything, because humans are a bad species that are cursed with the ability to admire, to envy, to fight, to harm each other for reasons other than survival, to cheat, to lie, and ultimately, to hate.

And that is why I admire animals.

Squirrels are clever planners in that they save their food, selectively, so no food is leftover and wasted. In the same way, camels are able to survive happily on their own in vast, expansive deserts with a mere storage of water in their humps. A potato bug, although is mildly depressive, seems to function pretty well living where they live. A cheetah, copes with its environment by being fierce and speedy, and hunts hard to earn their food, unlike us, who lazily input numbers, regurgitate our literature, and press buttons, and push and pull joysticks for our daily bread.

Although a turtle is slow, it is self-reliant, well protected and peaceful. Dogs are known for their loyalty. Cats don't need environmentally unfriendly soaps and shampoos to be fastidious self-cleaners. Birds know how to be free. Elephants are wiser. Pigs are humbler. Monkeys and gorillas are better communal primates than we are. Ants are more hard-working. Dung beetles actually make use of feces, while we just throw all our crap into landfills.

Boy, why can't we be like them? We shouldn't lose some of our animalistic qualities. With a little inspiration from the animal kingdom, I think the world would be better managed, and better lived.

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Oh, by the way, Dad's postponed until Sunday.

12 - In the end, that's death.

This is not my view on death! I wrote this as I was starting a novel (which I didn't continue writing due to writer's block) and it was part of a character's thoughts. I wrote it spontaneously in one of my creative moods. I thought it was worth sharing and that's all. 'Tis not my personal perspective.

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In the end, your eyes might tear from the very idea of leaving your life and this world. You might stay there absorbing the last minutes of your personal environment, whether it be inhaling the smells or listening attentively to the surrounding sound, or perhaps observing things in your proximity, like taking a mental picture of everything around you, or focusing on using your sense of touch as you take in your last breaths, for you might lose that particular sensation altogether once you enter another world.

In the end, you may be lying in your bed, or perhaps a hospital bed, but wherever you are: you will be weak. From the gray hairs on your balding head to the stiff callus on the soles of your feet, the state of every joint, every muscle and every organ in between will all be indications of your body's degradation.

In the end, your lungs will be loose, your kidneys will have shriveled and the cells of your liver will be wrinkled. The surfaces of your eyes and the inner walls of your nasal cavity will be drier than they ever have been in your lifetime. Your eyes will shut from the tiredness and you will remain immobile from now onwards, apart from maybe a slight twitch of the finger or a shrivel of the nose. As you lay there recalling the memories from your past, the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the good and the bad, a few tears may seep through your closed eyelids and trickle down your cheeks from all that reminiscing. As the fabric underneath you dampens, you may suddenly feel it, that moment where your life flashes before your eyes, where you feel every emotion in the book all at the same time while remaining apathetic too, where you feel a final jolt of energy coming from the last pump of your heart and there, you will have experienced your very last experience.

In the end, your heart will stop beating. The combined effect of your lungs and your brain running out of oxygen will render all other organs useless. Your front will go pale. Your back will go dark. Your blood will have trickled downwards to the lower regions of your anatomy. At this point, your thought and your feeling are long gone, which is why you will not feel tense as your muscles stiffen due to the absence of minerals being transported around. Your white cells will have died and your body will lose its capacity to fight off bacteria. For that reason, your body will begin to decompose. Your muscles can relax again, but not in a good way.

In the end, you will die.

In the end, you are dead.

In the end, the people you knew, the people you met and the people you love will come to know that you are dead. Your grandchildren will lose their memory of you sooner than your children, while your children will carry that saddening sense of loss with them everyday. Your friends and your siblings will have died already or they will soon. It is only a matter of time before they no longer think of you on a daily basis and very slowly, you will be forgotten, unless you have done something extraordinary in your lifetime to influence the world. To attain a personal identity like such is rare and the chances are: you do not matter.

In the end, you may be sitting in a heap at the bottom of a vase, or laying in a coffin six feet underground, or scattered in the ocean underneath a cliff. Burned, buried or blown away: wherever you are in the end, that's it.

In the end, that's death.