Time's elope

A few days ago, while I was watching Oliver Stone's epic masterpiece "Alexander", I couldn't help but think about one particular thought: "What if Julius Caesar had never existed?" I wouldn't even know how to begin to divulge into that topic, seeing as how I'm not that well informed on Roman history, but it still offered some remarkable insights.

There are nearly seven billion people on this planet. Surrounded by all that chaos of voices, hopes and dreams, surely there must be some meaning to it all? There must be a reason why two people can find each other and two more become forever lost. There must be a reason why I am here and why I have these thoughts that I have. Sometimes I think people forget how pivotal they can be in the world's history. After all, our time here is so short, so why not try and make the most of it? Why not live life to its fullest? And why not take those chances we know we'd otherwise never take? The future is not set in stone. We all have our hammers and chisels to carve our own path with.

So given how valuable life is, I do wonder how big its influence can be. If Hitler never was, would the second World War still have occured? If Einstein had never lived, he wouldn't have invented the atomic bomb that meant the destruction of so many things in this world. Of course, there are so many "What ifs" and even more possible outcomes to accompany such scenarios that they offer an infinity worth of thoughts. These "What ifs" can be a great source of wisdom and a new perspective on life, but it can also become an addiction, an excuse for not wanting to adapt to this world, instead choosing to believe in another world entirely.

If we think of each life as a peddle being thrown in a pond, it makes you wonder just how far your ripples stretch? Are you just an insignificant drop, no different than one of those trillions of stars illuminating our skies or do you have the power to cast such powerful ripples that they last for decades, centuries even? The latter should include people such as Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Caesar, Mao, Che Guevera and even Barack Obama as the first black President of the United States. A country that up until a few decades ago, still waged a war for equal racial rights.

Sometimes it's funny how history can unravel itself. The smallest of people can become the biggest of leaders, the most ignorant of people can become the greatest thinkers of that time and others, who were born with every privilige and every possible advantage, become irreparably damaged. It almost seems as though it's all random, but how can that be when everything else that surrounds us seems so right and predestined?

Now I'm not saying I'm a determinist, but sometimes things just happen for a reason. There must be a reason why I didn't finish my studies in Ghent and instead relocated to Brussels to go study there? There must be a reason why Churchill survived getting hit by that cab in 1931? And more importantly, why does our world have the potential to sustain organic life when all other worlds in our vicinity are so inhospitable? Why did we not perish in the nuclear holocaust everyone predicted would happen in the final days of the Cold War?

There must be some kind of design to it? Not something written by some sort of deity or any other type of religion, but something else entirely. Something unbound by physical or even metaphorical form, something that just is. Just as we are. The greatest determination in this world is the fact there is none.