The Joke

Relax. You’re eternal. Your name will echo through centuries, carved into stone, whispered in classrooms, immortalized in the collective memory of humankind. Because, obviously, the universe has nothing better to do than preserve you.

Except it won’t.

In a few thousand years, not even dust will care you existed. Your triumphs, your heartbreaks, your carefully rehearsed philosophies — all of it will collapse into silence. Stars will burn out, galaxies will drift apart, and your grand contribution to existence will vanish with the elegance of a soap bubble.

But yes, by all means, keep thinking you mattered.

History, after all, is generous. It remembers a handful of emperors, a few poets, some scientists who broke the code of nature. And then it erases the rest without apology. That’s not cruelty. That’s efficiency. Entropy doesn’t keep archives.

Still, isn’t it adorable how you believe your story is different? That somehow the laws of physics will make a rare exception because you wrote, or prayed, or loved a little harder than the rest? Don’t worry, the stars are listening. They’re just laughing too hard to answer.

Here’s the trick, though: this isn’t tragedy. It’s liberation. You don’t have to be remembered. You don’t have to be permanent. The absurdity is the point — the punchline is freedom.

Because in the blink of cosmic time you’re given, you get to exist. To breathe. To think. To create. To stand under the sky and know it doesn’t care — and still choose to live like it does. That’s the joke. That’s the miracle.

So yes, the universe will forget you. Congratulations. Now you’re free to do something worth forgetting.