Once I thought, "our ancestors are dead, and look at how each individual made an impact on humanity. Of the billions that have lived, how few names do we remember? How many do we care about? How many special moments were had that were able to impact the lives of those in the future?"

Modern times are hardly different: we will all meet the same fate as our ancestors, though the time is different, the traditions and styles a parody of the past in an attempt to appear progressive, when yet we shall die no differently; our history will crumble apart and misconceptions about our lifestyle will appear, leaving us nothing but a terrifying caricature of what we once truly were. What does it matter if a lone hair stuck out when you went out on a date for the first time? The ketchup stain on your shirt? That you went out on a date? The seasonal change of temperature? The flat tire? The broken computer? The burning house? The loss of life and limb? Hah, dangerous thoughts.

But thoughts, what are those? Nothing more than chemical reactions? Love, hate, happiness, sadness, courage, fear, are these not all at their base also a routine happenstance- an imbalance? Why do we prefer one imbalance over the other? Do we cross too close to an unspoken edge? Is life truly about catering to these all-too-fickle reactions and imbalances?

Even with the provided, I think the portents of the future are the most awe-inspiring. Consider that society shall continue as it has, generations upon generations following in sequence: birth, contribution, procreation, death, all to end forgotten. What lives on is our contribution to society, the deception of solidarity through our children, and all the carefully altered histories of important events. What becomes of this? Humanity faces certain annihilation in its war against time. Perhaps we shall last until the supernova of our star. Perhaps we shall not, and our hunt for drinkable water will elude us entirely. Perhaps a supervolcano shall claim us even earlier, leaving nothing of our past but ash.

Shall we embrace a singularity to end the cycle? Apropos, that the witness of our demise be of our own creation. My greatest musing has been that were any alien civilization to stumble upon our extinct species, they would find nothing other than that our greatest claim was to have lived long enough to pass the torch to our successors.

Congratulations, humanity; what a marathon we've won.