Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

“Like the sway of the sea and the tug of the tides, love is a moving, eternal thing. Let us not be afraid of the wax and the wane, the rise and the fall, the eternal undertow. Each time our souls meet, let us submerge our bodies in the bright blue

cold, and let the waves make us anew.”

Over the past lifetime I had seen the way it eroded democracy and gamified conflict, the way it splintered attention spans and polarised opinions to dangerous extremes, the way it devalued art and fed the leeches of artificial intelligence, the way it jacked adrenaline and manipulated dopamine and narrowed human awe to a singular flickering point.

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“The Evelyn I know … they love over and over and over again, even though it can only ever end in tragedy. Even though they’ve lost everyone they’ve ever loved, and they miss them in the next life, and the next, and the next. Never have they developed hard edges like I have. Never have they tried to protect themselves from that pain. They love softly, and fiercely, and openly, and

it’s the bravest thing I know. The most human thing I know.”

Practising grief is of no real benefit to anyone. Losing a loved one is not something you can rehearse—at least, not in a healthy way. It’s better to enjoy the time you have with her.”

And hadn’t I always known this? That to be human was to love and love and love, knowing it could only end in tragedy? Every babe in arms was born to this terrible fate, every parent and child, every spouse, every friend and lover and sibling, every uncle and aunt and great-great-grandfather, every found family, all of us bound to the perpetual cycle, all of it so awful and wonderful and inescapable. To love was to live, and to live was to die.