Eari

People cross my mind from time to time. Although there is a lot of fluctuation in social relationships and interactions, I tend to recall all the people I have met, all the moments and experiences we shared—the bonds forged and broken, love lost, found, and lost again. So many individuals, so many characters, so many beautiful minds as well as cruel ones. The vast number of people an individual can meet and interact with in a lifetime is astonishing and frightening all the same. All these souls passing by, saying hello, staying for a while, and leaving just the same. And yet, still, we can’t shake the feeling of isolation and loneliness. The crippling disease of this world is being alone while surrounded by individuals.

It’s like Rutger Hauer said in *Blade Runner* when he reminisced about his experiences and memories that would be gone when his life ended, comparing them to “tears in rain.” Each of us is like a teardrop in vast oceans (since *Eari* is Quenya for “seas”). The sheer scale of everything is simply overwhelming—people, thoughts, ideas—on a level my mind will never be able to fully understand. Like the concept of time, which didn’t even exist before there was space—though even that is wrong, because there was no “before” before time, which makes room for all kinds of crazy ideas and concepts. Everything is crazy, and it gets even crazier the more we learn, which is both the most exciting and the scariest thing about it.

We need to cope with things as they are. We need to move on, swim in the vast seas of everything, and try not to get lost in it all. We are all part of this, and it’s (mostly) a great thing to be part of. This is our contribution.