The Race is not to the Swift

The Race is not to the Swift

So this is what it's like. To overcome insurmountable odds and defeat the unbeatable foe. To be the turtle crossing the finish line as the hare looks on in horror and disbelief. I must admit, I never would have dreamed that this moment would arrive. Yet, here we are. Victorious in our humility. Magnificent in our mediocrity. They didn't stand a chance. Sure, we were outnumbered; their weapons far superior and their strategy nearly flawless. But in their hubris, they neglected a crucial detail. Fate. Fortune favors the brave and none are braver than those who fight for their very existence. 

Winning this war wasn't logical. Hell, it was downright comical. How were we to triumph over such a formidable adversary? We could have surrendered and cut our losses. Lived as slaves or lab experiments. Our slow extermination would have been their daily entertainment. They needed nothing from us. We would exist solely for their amusement. We had no other purpose. We were expendable, insignificant. Unworthy of life itself. Or so they thought…

As a matter of fact, that was exactly what we believed of ourselves before their arrival. At least we behaved as though we did. Listless and miserable, letting each day melt disgustingly into the next. Rotting corpses of consciousness leaking poisonous thoughts and dysfunctional emotions into the threadbare collective matrix that bound us together. It was a slow, agonizing soul death, one which we should have been all too eager to embrace. But somehow the possibility of being denied the choice to end (or prolong) our suffering at our own leisure spurred something deep within us. Was it anger? Was it hope? Was it a primal need to live in perpetual pain? Did it really matter? We only knew that we needed to preserve the right to choose our own poison.

So, we rose up. Our weapons were the equivalent of stones and pitchforks compared to the sophisticated arsenal launched against us. The proverbial David and Goliath scenario. Only David had a sense of duty and self awareness that we were noticeably lacking and Goliath had a mastery of science and physics that we couldn't begin to fathom. Entire populations were decimated by powerful unseen forces. Cities looked like grandma's living room where an old fashioned insect fogger had been set off and bugs had crawled out to meet their doom. 

The governments caved after the first assault wave, our benevolent leaders cowering in bunkers and leaving us to be slaughtered like farm animals. They entered into "negotiations" hoping to save their useless carcasses, promising to be effective overseers in the new world order. But the joke was on them. Our conquerors had no use for middle men. They lured them out of their safe havens with talk of unlimited authority over the ignorant masses, then exterminated them in front of the very citizens they had tried to throw under the cosmic bus. A fitting end for such despicable vermin. 

However, it left the rest of us in a bit of a jam. We had grown dependent on our current form of serfdom and it sort of threw everything into chaos for a while. In all honesty, they did us a solid by disrupting such an archaic and unviable system, but it was what we had been using for the last few centuries and it was familiar. What wasn't familiar was the complicated feelings that arose within us. As much as we maligned our pitiful lives and squandered our intellect on baseless pursuits and empty pleasures, we could not accept being controlled by a vastly superior species. So we resisted. Over and over. Day after day. Casualty after casualty. 

They looked at our rebellion as a minor inconvenience. Something to be tolerated until we figured out how futile it was. Much like standing back and watching a toddler throw a tantrum before going to bed, knowing that they will eventually tire themselves out and simply fall asleep. They were indeed patient, in a smug, patronizing sort of way. It was this unassuming arrogance that led to their demise. They thought they were above us, above most species. Above the Law. 

You see, the Law of the universe as it applies to humanity is summed up very nicely in a particular line of Scripture in the Christian bible: "...the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither bread to the wise, nor riches to those of understanding, nor favor to those of skill: but time and chance happens to them all." (Ecclesiastes 9:11, to be exact). Karma looked at what they were doing and told Justice to hold her beer. She spun the Wheel and that fickle finger of Fate landed right in the ass of our would be overlords. 

Who knew that the lowly cockroach, the most loathed and vilified creature on the planet, would be the savior of humanity? One of the nasty little bastards got caught up in their pristine environmental systems and spread a pestilence that made the Black Death look like a case of crabs. Within days, their numbers had been cut in half. In a few weeks, 80% of their compliment had been wiped out. They had no choice but to high tail it out of the Solar System and find a cure. Fast. 

With that unfortunate incident behind us, we can look forward to picking up the pieces of our shattered civilizations and building our lives from scratch. But have we actually learned anything from this experience? Will we start anew with a respectful appreciation for our lives? Or will we fall back into listless apathy, constantly chasing a pink dragon into a fun house of mirrors that distort our image into caricatures of what we think we are supposed to be? Who knows? But we, and we alone, get to make that choice. 

Oh, and please think twice before you kill a cockroach. Unless they are flying...

The End