I guess I’m afraid of everything falling apart. I’m afraid of needless pain and suffering. War that starts on nothing more than a misunderstanding. I’m afraid of a cure existing and people not being able to get it, or not even knowing it exists. So much is wasted or done inefficiently just because we don’t know how to do it better. I’m afraid of two soulmates meeting on a plane and never seeing each other again. I’m afraid that Romeo will never get the message about Juliet’s fake death and will needlessly kill himself in his grief.

In my ideal world, our fundamental project is to create the one place where things do not fall apart: heaven. We’ll imitate angels and build our own versions of the gates, the shimmering walls of stone, and the towers. And we’ll do such a good job that we forget we’re not really there! Every placed brick, by heavenly logic, will stay there; every water pipe will work indefinitely, and will always be clean; once something is known, everyone will know it. “The borders of our kingdom will only grow,” we’ll say; “everything we have, we’ll have forever, and everything we don’t we’ll have eventually.” As the subtle spirit of Earth quietly wears down the walls, we’ll become idle kings. Our achievement is immense—why walk the gardens today, when we can just as well do it tomorrow?

Maybe if we were a saner species, we’d realise nothing is certain and wake up every day just like we were freshly born, and everything we owned would be new to us again. Instead we do things and forget them, and are given things and forget them. Our facsimile of heaven is breached and barren. Neglected rubble collapses down to Earth. Quelle suprise.