”What if nothing matters? I mean, they make us feel like we’re standing on this precipice. Like at any moment, we’ll fall, and the world will end. But maybe it’s not true. Maybe that precipice doesn’t exist, and it’s all in our heads. Take Europe, for example. The whole damn continent was fire bombed to Hell during World War Two. But look at it now. You’d never know. Surely the people who were there, who ran from the bombs, thought the world was ending. When the smell of burnt flesh became familiar, they must have believed it was the end. But it wasn’t.”
”It was the end for the people who lost their lives.”
”Right. But everybody dies. We shouldn’t be anxious about falling off that precipice.”
”There’s this swamp near my grandfather’s place, and they have a lot of beavers. And about once a year these beavers dam up the swamp, and it causes the swamp to flood the road. So every year the State goes out there with sticks of dynamite, and they blow up the beaver dam. And then the beavers start on another dam, and then the state blows it up and so on and so on.”
”It’s like that myth with that guy and the rock.”
”But the beavers don’t stress about it. They just think ‘OK. Time to build another dam. We’re beavers, it’s what we do.’ Does building the dam matter? Probably not. But they have to do something while they wait around to die.”
”Beavers—my messiah.”
