The Meaning of Life

 When I was little girl, I didn't want to be a firefighter because I considered that their big ladder on their big red truck was way too short to reach for the stars. When I was little, I wanted to become an astronaut. The vastness of space fascinated me, and from the age of five, I knew by heart the eight planets of the solar system, nine, if we counted Pluto. This obsession shaped my life until I was ten years old. My parents were very happy, because, thanks to this superb carrot (without the stick), they made me learn everything they wanted. " An astronaut must speak English ! " : At seven I spoke it correctly, at eleven I obtained my first B2 english certification, and today, at sixteen, i think to be near the top. An astronaut was obviously, for my parents, a woman with multiple gifts. In addition to French and English, she had to speak Russian or Chinese. As I have slightly slanted eyes, I naturally choose Chinese. I don't regret the intensive learning of these two major languages, they allowed me, via the Web, a terrifying opening on the world.

 So for example, after the first and pleasant Chinese romantic-historical series, I quickly became aware of the socio-political reality of the Chinese people, who will soon make "1984", Orwell's masterful work, look like a kindergarten children's tale ! The-multiple-woman-of-the stars was playing a musical instrument : I learned to play clarinet. The-multiple-woman-of-the-stars, who was bored between two missions, played chess with her fellow teammates: so I also played chess where I became, until the yellow vests and COVID-19 crisis, five times Champion of Burgundy. I liked the-multiple-woman-of-the-stars very much, until day when... until the day when the-multiple-woman-of-the-stars cowardly abandoned me. The drama scene was played out by the ophthalmologist, the man skilled in the art, who was also responsible for the vision of military pilots, announced to me, sadly, that I should henceforth wear mole glasses and forget the stars. At that moment, he was right, my eyesight was blurred, but it was because I was crying. At home, we never spoke of the-multiple-woman-of-the-stars again, and she, also disappointed, never called me back either.

 As soon as the sky closed its doors to me, I had to quickly find a reason for living. Of course, Earth did not have the majesty of the vastness of space, but I still thought I would find my place. Determined, I studied the world around me. I was learning quickly and just as fast, doubt came over me. With amazement, I became aware of the duality of all the state and media discourse of all the societies and cultures constituting the men of this planet. I lived in a world where lying was erected into a subtle art that had to be sublimated. All is well "Madame la Marquise" ! There is no global warming linked to human behavior, "just climate change, cyclical and quite natural": dixit, peremptory and proudly standing in front of his Hummer, my professor of Life Sciences and Earth! For a year or two after I turned ten, I still hesitated: Yes, No, who was right or wrong? But there are none so deaf as those who will not hear and so I realized: my world was far from being Heaven but indeed, a perfect Hell.

 I'm sixteen today, and I could for hours, tell you, gloomily, all about this one. Moreover, I am taking as my own the speech of September 23, 2019, of Greta Thunberg at the UN, which I also translated into French and reinterpreted on YouTube. I totally agree with her, down to the comma. However, since this speech, today, nothing has changed except that the oil companies have achieved the feat of refreezing the permafrost that was melting, just the width of their trucks, to access the last liters of oil from the Antarctic! You adults, you leave us a paradoxical world. On one hand you naively try to lie to us, it's stronger than you, and on the other you leave at our free disposal, through the Web, all the information necessary for the appreciation of the reality of our world. The greatest scientists, poor wolves howling at the Moon, signing multiple petitions with their blood, for more than forty years have been warning you of the danger, and even worse, precisely from the tipping point, this point of no return where we are already! The world, irretrievably, has been going mad for over a decade, and now the seers are all blood red. Thus, today, the haves, eager for scarcity and the last images of the end of a world, flock to admire on a luxury cruise, the inexorable and shattering disappearance of the last icebergs ... The less rich, in a unconscious frenzy, fall back on credit to the purchase of monstrous 4x4 or SUV, asking themselves as the only existential question, the potential answer to the difficult choice of color, always metallic, of their rolling aberration... Of rage, the glaciers, murdered, pouring out one last time with a crash in their thousand-year-old beds before disappearing forever... The oceans are also dying by an excess of carbon dioxide, and inside, the crabs which are now bathing in this far too acidic salinity, lose their shells and all die as well with, fraternal, their close neighbors: all the crustaceans and corals... The animal world is not spared: in less than only fifty years, a tiny breath in the History of Humanity, we have "lost" two thirds of the "Wild" Life of our planet and the remaining third is truly in agony. Does Humanity in its arrogance believe that it can do without our brothers the Animals? Nothing is less sure !

 I know that many right-thinking adults reading this text will be annoyed and even exasperated by this black and peremptory reading and I also know that this alignment of words, this series of jarring sentences, will not have, as usual, no impact if not maybe, if this news wins an award, sacrifice a few more trees for its print publication. I have often wanted to participate in a number of similar literary challenges or as a very young adult you are offered to foresee a probable future from our present, not very bright. The problem is that the majority of these challenges rejected outright, in their regulations, a pessimistic sprawl of non-solutions for a lost future. Obviously, I do not wish to participate in this kind of antics. The biggest mistake, for me, of the men of this world, therefore adults in the majority, is that they always think they can erase with a wave of a magic wand their accumulated errors. This is obviously totally wrong. We are already and irremediably in an alternative of no return. Twenty or fifteen years ago, the most knowledgeable scientists predicted a double or quits for the survival or death of our societies at a deadline of "only" a century. Today, in 2021, we must face the facts: things are racing, and a total breakdown of the system in the next thirty-forty years is a certainty.

 The rulers of this world, the past Trump the Bolsonaro, the Lukashenko, the Putin, the Kim Jon Un, the Narendra Modi (I would not speak here of Xi Jinping because it is not unlikely, because poor, that I will do my higher education in China in a few years), disturbing with cynicism and stupidity, are dictators that the worst science-fiction scenarios of the last fifty years would not have dared to invent. These "men" of power, are for me, the world sign of a great ambient unease, and for us young people, in general, the expression of a great astonishment and of an even greater suspicion towards of the mental and intellectual state of the majority of adults on this planet.

 In this rapid agony of our world, I know that I have no other choice than to undergo a fight lost in advance, with nevertheless, as only motivation in this ordeal, the quality displayed of a dignity in the face of Chaos, which I will have to impose until my death...

May God help me!

Roxanne-Lou AMINIAN, 03/2021