Why You Are Nothing

A  couple of weeks ago (or was it a couple of months? The ravages of dementia! Play for me) I reminded Brigitte, who doesn't have a drop of American blood in her yet watched every femtosecond of election coverage, that Halfwit Romney would be a punchline in less than three months. She just wouldn't believe me.

But face it, he is, isn't he? If you asked 100 Americans who Mitt Romney was, at least 93 of them would shrug and say "No clue, sorry."

Do you remember Senator Gary Hart? No? How about James Brady? Nancy Kerrigan? John Bobbitt?

No, no and no? Well, let me tell you, at some point (at least in my lifetime) they were the subjects of relentless news coverage -- some would say ROUND-THE-CLOCK news coverage.

Hard to believe, isn't it? Most of you probably have never EVER heard of these people, yet they're all still alive!

My point here, is that in 100 years, let alone the two or three decades that have gone by with some of the people I mentioned, NO one alive will remember them at all! Yep, not even your grandson will profess to have ever heard a single word about any one of them!

Today, Mitt Romney, although there was an excruciating time there for about four months in which you couldn't even go to the bathroom without hallucinating his name in the toilet flush, might as well have moved to Clipperton Island for all I know . . . and in one year from now his name will be so utterly forgotten that his own children will come home from school one day and say "Who are you and what are you doing in my house? Get out before I call the cops!"

And on a much, much more personal scale, YOU will be completely, utterly forgotten. In 100 years, ANYONE alive today will either be very, very old, or very very dead. Thus, NOT ONE LIVING SOUL will remember you, what you did for your miserably short life, unless you are, perhaps, Ringo Starr, and even if you are, you'll just be another footnote in history.

But if you are you, the earth is not going to recognize your passing or even the fact that you were ever here. Have you ever wandered around in a cemetery? Know any of the names on those headstones? Thought not.

No, to the universe in general, you won't have registered as even a neutrino in terms of your effect on the progress of it. I mean do you even know how many countless AMERICANS (sorry, being ethno-centric here) lost their lives during WWII  and it is not known HOW, let alone WHERE or WHY? Not even their own wives, children, brothers or sisters, let alone the branch of the service they were in have a CLUE whatever happened to them. They might as well have NEVER EXISTED.

Even the school shooter from two days ago -- anyone know his name? Anyone know the name of the school he shot up? In twenty years, is anyone but a tiny handful of people even going to remember, let alone care?

And in 2,000 years, is there going to be anyone around to remember WWII or 9/11?

In 10,000 years, is anyone going to be around, period?

So go to your graves and take solace knowing that ten thousand millenniums from now most, if not ALL the atoms that are buzzing around in your body, the ones that make up YOU right at this moment (though you are shedding billions of them even as you read these words), are very likely still going to be buzzing around somewhere, maybe as part of a leaf or an iceberg or even a cloud.

That's kind of a cool thought, isn't it?