prompt: spin, title: a certain measure of hope in misc. flash fiction

I’ve been thinking a lot about what an honor is to not die young and pretty, what a privilege it is to instead just wind down, simply wear out. How often it is a person doesn’t get to experience that, living the full cycle through, the billions and billions that haven’t. Not that I was pretty even when I was young, Christ, how insufferable I would’ve been had I been cast in gold like that, how vanishing little I would’ve learned from this life had I been so very double-edge cursed to have a life like that. Whether by fate or circumstance, I was half-clever but terribly awkward and had to see the world as how it was for all the rest of us, the vast majority of the species not born gilded. If there’s anything useful to me at all, it’s that I got that full experience while still having a half-measure of cleverness and a rudimentary understanding of my letters. Maybe I can say a handful of things useful or at least comforting to others in the same goddamned situation, small and mortal, short lives and modest prospects, but riding this mad brief rolly-coaster nonetheless.

I look forward to when the world has passed me by, when the technology is beyond my ken and the ways of joy and love are beyond the stogy comprehension I was born into. If I get to live to see that point, it means that things retain the possibility to change, the capacity to still get better. If I am very old one day and everyone and everything are functioning under the same rules and conceptions I learned from cable television, I’ll know the jig is up and stagnation will soon burn the whole mess down. As it was for London, for Rome, Athens, Uruk, all “great capitals” so long past they’re more obscure than my failures could ever hope to be. The idea that after I am gone, I’ll be rolling in my grave at how different humanity has become, it fills me with a peculiar sort of hope, since if my corpse turns beneath that loam with fear or disgust, it means Earth somehow found the will to spin on. I have my doubts about that rosy picture of the future, I would happily be proven wrong.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how wonderful it’d be live long enough of a life where I knew I’d done enough, learned enough, passed enough of what I’d seen and reckoned out in tears and time along to others, that I knew this human race had some decent shot at treating itself better as the centuries dragged on without me. There is no guarantee of that, of course, but that’s probably for the best. Since I can’t know for sure, I’ll have to keep on trying my best right up until the bastard in the bright nightgown comes to drag me away. It keeps me at the task. It keeps me honest.