We are but a single splash in an infinite void. The stars are miniscule, soon to all die. Galaxies have hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of stars, yet they will die too. How much more so will we? What are we, in the infinite void? In the vast nothingness, the unceasing non-existence that will invariably consume things so much greater than us?

We are nothing. A speck of specks, an ant on an ant, a single raindrop’s splash in the sea. We are laughably temporary, hilariously insignificant, alone. We have no hope of making any impact that won’t be lost in the sands of ages. The cessation of our ripples is inevitable.

You will be forgotten. Nothing you can do will be remembered by the vast cosmos. Nothing.

Everything returns to stillness. It's a fact of physics. Energy disperses. Dilutes itself with nothingness. Light, heat, matter, it is all finite. The void is not so confined. Everything to ever be is like a single grain of salt in a swimming pool. It will dissolve and disperse over such a great area that nobody will ever notice it was added.

They say the Big Bang made the universe. I think they’re right, that our universe was loud when it was made. It’s only been getting quieter. Less concentrated. We live in an age of echos, reverberating throughout the cosmos, in a brief moment where everything is quiet enough that we can survive the noise, but loud enough that there is noise.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The window of existence is small and ever closing. The echoes getting quieter, ever less potent.

To live is to flail against the void, to deny the truth of eternal darkness. To flail is to create a ripple, struggling to stay afloat in the all encompassing flow of entropy. Those ripples may last, they may even last past you, but all ripples grow weaker the longer they last. The impact of your life will fade, diminish, fail.

Creating a legacy through children? It is a fool’s errand. Your progeny will forget you eventually. The things you instilled in your children will be lost to the ripples of their contemporaries. Time will flow, your descendants may grow, but your influence on them will increasingly be drowned out by the plodding of culture from one extreme to the other.

Flailing against the void is futile. Your ripples will be lost. Your striving is meaningless.

There is one hope. That there is something greater than the cosmos, greater than time, greater than the unending diminishing of life. If that is true, then we may find purpose in it. If that is true, then our impact may be eternal. If that is true, then life could be more than treading the vast pool of stillness that is the void. If God is real, if he holds the universe in the span of his hand, if he knows each of our names, then I could find a reason to flail.

God is the only reason to try. He can prolong our ripples eternally. He can hold open the window of existence. He can remember us when the stars are all dead. The only answer to Nihilism? God.