Our Shared Oblivion

My mind has an extraordinary ability to circle. I'm the kind of person who has the same anxiety-inducing thoughts circling in my head over and over. The way I made a fool of myself months ago, or the embarrassing thing I said years ago. There is a rhythm to it, as steadfast as it is compulsive or obsessive.

In truth, I take solace and refuge in thinking of our great equalizer. Oblivion. Everything I've ever done or said is a sandcastle on the beach with the tide coming in, at some point. Scientists have moved their metaphorical Doomsday clock to [85 seconds to midnight](https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/). Later, the sun will balloon into a red giant and leave Earth a smouldering crater. Even later, entropy will eventually cause all the atoms in the universe to be so heartbreakingly far apart from one another that it will be called heat death.

And, for me, there is a macabre, morbid sigh of relief. No matter what mistakes I make, no matter what haunts me, it will eventually be forgotten. The concept of forgetting will itself be forgotten.

And maybe, too, this is how I cope with what I cannot reckon with. The deepest oil-slicked pits of horror we are witnessing on a daily basis. Our witnessing of atrocity we have no control of stopping. The [ongoing genocides](https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/why-there-s-no-debate-about-genocide-and-no-response-either). The revelations found in files. [330 gallons of sulphuric acid](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15545409/330-gallons-sulfuric-acid-purchased-Epstein-Island-day-FBI-opened-investigation-paedophiles-trafficking-charges-newly-released-files-appear-show.html). [Children taken from their mothers at birth](https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/epstein-secret-children-files-island-kp9lgl2v0). Just yesterday, there was a mass shooting in my neighbouring province.

I think, too, how oblivion will gracefully wash away all atrocity. And in the colourless silence, I think there will be peace for those who unjustly did not find it here.

---

And yet, despite all of this, my mind has an extraordinary ability to hope. I am optimistic. Perhaps pathologically. Oblivion is inevitable but this brief, finite, bizarre existence certainly wasn't. None of this was anywhere close to being guaranteed. I believe it is our sacred duty to make things better in the now, in the present moment.

There are so many of us with immense privilege. Sure, we do not seem to be gifted with the capacity to end suffering and atrocity, or the marionette-style systems which act as vehicles for widespread suffering and oppression. But there is still so much we are capable of.

Because, beyond mere oblivion, we have fields of imagination and will. As Frankl wrote about in [*Man's Search for Meaning*](https://en.