A terribly lonely species

On cooler evenings when the moon is full and the clouds are drawn back, I go out to look at the stars 

There’s no overromanticized back story behind it; I’m not dreaming of my lover staring down at me from space, I’m not poetically musing over the beauty of the night sky – It’s just me, a 16-year-old male, with a lot of unanswered questions about the universe, our place in it as a species, and my place in it as a member of said species.

After a few minutes with my neck craned upwards, and probably because of the blood rushing to my head, I experience an overwhelming sense of eternity and possibility – The vastness of the night sky, a mere fraction of the universe, terrifies me. The thought that so much of our universe is uncharted frontier boggles my mind and the prospect of us being all alone in this gigantic universe is almost unbearable. And apparently, I’m not alone, because, for many millennia, other people have gazed up at the sky and asked themselves the big question: “Huh?”

Because while every other species, it seems, firmly positioned itself in various nutrient cycles and ecosystems, it seems humans don’t exactly fit in anywhere. The carbon and nitrogen cycles for example would be perfectly complete without the existence of humans and in many ways, we don’t do much to enrich food chains and food webs. The inconvenient truth is, Planet Earth doesn’t need us (I’m laughing as I’m writing this). In fact, Planet Earth would be better off without us. And it seems our only source of comfort is thinking about how somewhere out there, another human-like species may exist that will make us feel less terrible about all the disgusting things we’ve done to this planet. 

But that’s not the point. 

We are a terribly lonely species. Living in a terribly lonely universe. 

Doomed to an eternity of loneliness. 

We are so terribly afraid to be lonely because to be lonely is to be incomplete. In just the same way that our species does not seem to complete any network of species, so it is that we feel incomplete without people by our side to fill in the gaps in our existences whose origins may or may not be unknown. Notice just how far we go to find people who ‘complete us’; to get into relationships, platonic or not, that make us feel whole again. Our experiences chip away parts of our being and leave cracks and crevices that we are ashamed of. We turn to people to fill those cracks. 

But perhaps, just perhaps, our loneliness might not be such a bad thing. And perhaps to fixate on resolving that loneliness is a dangerous game – One that creates the impression of wholeness. And when that wholeness is lost, we seemingly lose everything, including ourselves again. 

2020 was probably the most hilarious year on record (at least, for me) because, for the first time in centuries, people were left lonely. And we did everything, and I mean everything to try to distract ourselves from our loneliness: We baked bread, played texting games, we played with Tik Tok, we joined Twitter and did just about everything to ensure that we wouldn’t be left alone with our thoughts. 

We wouldn’t be lonely. 

It was wild. 

And it was ample evidence of the fact that there is a lot that we are running from, and that the wholeness we have had spent so long parading was a massive façade. 

2020 is coming to an end. It seems so strange to say it – It feels like the 74th of May. But it’s true – Another year has passed. Perhaps it’s time we embraced loneliness – Allowed ourselves to be incomplete and learnt to build on our incompleteness. To fill in the gaps for ourselves where possible, and where it’s not, to live with our gaps and to accept them as our own. We look to the stars with the hope that we may find our purpose in a seemingly purposeless world in the same way that we look outward to find out our own value. Perhaps it’s time we changed. 

In 1977, humanity sent 2 spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 into interstellar space, each carrying an identical copy of the same disk. On each copy is a collection of sounds and images that will be expected to tell the story of Homo sapiens to our interstellar neighbours – A picture the Earth, a collage showing the different means of feeding used by humans, the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, a prelude by Bach, a greeting by the then Secretary-General of the United Nations Kurt Waldheim and so much more. 

Today, Voyager 1 and 2 are over 18 billion kilometres away from the earth. To date, we have not received any responses from our interstellar friends – Perhaps they haven’t bumped into the Voyagers. Perhaps they bumped into them but didn’t know how to operate their mechanisms. Perhaps, they may have chosen to simply leave us on read. 

Or, we’re all alone, fated to be lonely. 

And if we are, that’s perfectly alright. 

Sincerely, 

Muku.