The End

In a small, isolated pocket of a community of greater and lesser luminaries once called the Milky Way, there is a little, insignificant lamp still glimmering its little, insignificant glimmer. There are a few astronomical objects caught in its gravity, eight of which are large enough to be called planets. Once upon a time, there was life on that third one. Those tiny, bright sparks that you see on the smouldering, black surface of the sphere are the lights they forgot to turn off.

The End of Times is coming, my friends, and it's been coming since the Beginning of Times. One of these days, the energy generated by the Big Bang will dissipate, and our pretty, cosmic balloon will deflate with a rude, blubbering noise. Or maybe poor, little Sol will flicker out because someone forgot to pay the gas bill, and all of us will be left shivering in the darkness like Moncton on a midwinter's Monday morning.

Some of you have stopped reading newspapers, and I don't blame you. What you're offered for the price of your subscription isn't really news at all. Instead, you get the rants, howls and dribblings of a battery of hacks, quacks, shills and charlatans who were hired to fill in the white space between the perfume ads. If you want to read the uninformed, biased blathering of a semi-erect, pseudo-literate, shaved chimpanzee, you can find that right here at Limited Vision.

Wanna let television inform your opinions instead? Fine, "Bowling With Celebrity Convicts" is on four channels at nine pm - but it's probably a rerun.

Parson Pocket has been thumping his Book of Revelation for years and telling us all that the Day of Judgement is upon us. In point of fact, he's been under investigation since 2003 on allegations of fraud, racketeering and statutory rape, so he's probably going to be appearing before a somewhat less illustrious court sometime soon.

All of us have the feeling that the world is going to end, and that it's probably going to occur right after we leave the building. We've named it Armageddon, Pralaya or Ragnarok - maybe we call it the Big Crunch. Because there seems to be no other point to the exercise, we might just use the End to justify our means: being rude, selfish, petty, manipulative and impatient with those who get in the way of what must needs be our short term goals.

"Get rich or die trying", "He who dies with the most toys wins", "If God didn't want them sheared, he wouldn't have made them sheep". We believe in the Trickle Down Effect of economics - that is, when we've used up the good, somebody else can have our garbage. If it's the End of the World, then all bets are off.

But what if it isn't? What if we get up tomorrow, look out the window and see our street shimmering under a light, clean blanket of snow? What if the beach has been swept clear of yesterday's litter and footprints? What if the next big thing is a fair thing? What if the people who form our new government really do want to be the good guys?

What if we were all a little kinder, all a bit fairer, all just a touch more generous and compassionate? Think about that.

That wouldn't be the end of the world.