Flash Nonfiction: Nobody Is Special, And That’s A Good Thing by T.L. Sullivan

By T. L. Sullivan

​The vast majority of my dreams are ones that aren’t particularly good, and aren’t particularly bad, but they certainly don’t make any sense. To be fair, neither does real life.
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Life is a very confusing place.  Wherever I was before I was born made a lot more sense. It was like when you sleep, but don’t dream. A lot of people fear death, or think that they will enter some heavenly gates. I do not think anything scary or novel will happen to me when I die. I think I will die knowing exactly what is going to happen to me. I have few expectations of death, so I will not be disappointed when it comes to me. If I am wrong about anything, I will not be too surprised. The one ignorance that every living human shares is that of death.

I wonder if killer whales know better what to expect when they die. I do not think my “spirit” or “soul” will continue to traipse around this earth, or in the sky. I read somewhere once that certain scientists think that, after you die, your “soul” goes to another universe. I do not think that is true. I think there is life, and then the end of it. There is evidence that your body loses a small amount of weight when you die. I can’t tell you what that means. It is up to you to think for yourself. For a while I believed that the energy that you had within you would go somewhere else, and be used to create some other life, like reincarnation.

But the energy that makes me up could just as easily be transformed into human or animal life as it could be transformed into any other expression of energy, like how a battery can be used in a flashlight, but you can also use one to power a small robotic parrot. I don’t have any great plans, or great wishes, because we will all be forgotten, whether you like it or not. Individual humans aren’t any more special than a blade of grass. Don’t think you are. It isn’t sad, but it can be troubling for people who have always thought they were more special than everything else. I want a green burial. That way, in the future, when some other intelligent race exists, they won’t be able to exhume my body to burn to run their hoverboards. They’ll only have my bones. Maybe I should go on a milk strike so that my bones will be so weak that by the time this intelligent race comes around, there will be no trace of me at all. Sometimes it is better for people to not know who you are.