Peculiar

Once upon a planet, white, and, green and blue, there were a bunch of very peculiar creatures who lived, and died, and that was all.

These creatures on this planet were a very insignificant bunch, to be sure, and their time in the Universe was extremely brief, just like the creatures that had lived on the very same planet before them. These creatures were no more important than any other, or any thing  for that matter, though these peculiar creatures thought that they were.

The creatures on this particular planet had done something very peculiar, and given themselves a name. Humans, they called themselves - a rather small name for a group that really did consider themselves to be very very important, though they were not at all.

These very peculiar creatures grew extraordinarily fond of naming. They began to name everything, forgetting that not all things must be named, nor be anything at all. They named all that was, and many things that were not, and gave themselves individual names too, making them feel all the more important. They even named the creatures that came before them, though none of those creatures were nearly as important as they were, since they could not name themselves.

They loved naming things so much, these peculiar creatures, that they even started writing things called "stories", about places, and things that did not exist - so they could name them too.

The humans and their names quickly forgot the meaning of nothing. Most of them simply could not fathom the concept of nothing, especially once they had named it. If nothing had a name, they thought, then it had to be something; and if nothing was something, it couldn't be nothing.

Even more peculiarly, these humans decided that they were so important that they must live forever, and created even more stories about different places where they would go to do this "forever living" - giving those places names too, of course. What was it called? Oh right, Heaven. That's what they called it. Or Hell maybe? Regardless, we've come to the most peculiar part; the humans believed their own made up stories were real. Their self-importance had grown so high that it could not be imagined that they were not forever. They believed in their own made up stories and names SO much, that they did another very extraordinarily peculiar thing - they started killing each other in the names of them. How peculiar they were.

Most of them "believed" (such a strange word, also unique to them) that they were the only creatures who mattered enough to go to these made up places and live forever - not even the creatures that had inhabited their planet for millions of years before them would be there - nope - only them, because they could name things.

Some of these peculiar creatures that called themselves "human" thought that they were even more important than other humans too, if you can believe that, and used used their made up stories to control the gullible and weak minded. Talk about peculiar, right?

*

Well, on another planet, very similar looking, there had lived a very similar creature to the humans - if similarity was to be based upon looks alone - for these creatures looked the same, but were not nearly as peculiar. These creatures understood that they were small and rather unimportant, and they knew what nothing was, and that before them, and after them, there would be no things too. They understood that when they died, that nothingness came after, and in turn these quite less peculiar creatures appreciated life more honestly than the humans - who lived in fear of the stories they had themselves made up.

The creatures of the other planet had cherished their time much more than the humans were capable of doing - since they were aware how insignificant and fragile they truly were.

These creatures did not name things, for those names would eventually be gone too, but instead made their short lives very grand, helping others like themselves, and other creatures too, because they knew that no creature was more important than any other. The humans had mainly done good out of fear, not out of love.

The other, less peculiar creatures did not have any need to believe that they were more important than any creature - or any thing for that matter - and their understanding of just how very small they were made them humble, where the humans called themselves humble - but most were not. The humble will admit their mistakes, but most of the exceptionally peculiar "humans" were so not humble that when their stories were actually proved wrong, most could not admit the mistakes of "humanity", and clung to their made up worlds in denial.

The humans had invented things called "souls" to compensate for their lack of humility - one of their most peculiar concepts - while the other creatures had understood that when a body died, everything was gone. They had known that the electric current went out and the brain started to rot within seconds, and even if another electric current were to try and read that brain again, the memories that were embedded there were corrupted like a scratched DVD, and there was nothing for the current to read. They knew the electrical current and the memory were not infused, as humans seemed to believe "souls" were. They were rational creatures, and content with their mortality, while the humans could not accept theirs.

In the end, both planets were gone, and no trace of them remained - and what the "humans" would find very peculiar themselves, is that nobody cared - not one bit. The universe didn't care, the other planets didn't care. Nothing cared, because no thing truly mattered; the peculiar creatures only thought they did because they had given themselves names.

These two very different places met the same fate. Extinction. In the end, there was no forever, not for the humans, not for the other planet, and not even for the Universe - no matter how important these peculiar creatures convinced themselves that they were.

I hope you enjoyed this. Pass it around if you did, with credit to me of course. :p

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