Foe

by Iain Reid

Everything changes. Change is one of the only certainties in life. Human beings progress. We have to. We evolve. We move. We expand. What seems far-fetched and extreme becomes normal and then outdated pretty quickly. We move on to the next thing, the next development, the next frontier.

Are some things meant to be, meant to happen? There are some things we can’t explain. Some call it fate. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t have to know more than that. Maybe the orbit we inhabit is preordained. I’m okay with it even if I don’t really believe in that kind of thing.

Habitual, comfortable activity is the worst kind of prison, because the bars are concealed.

“But isn’t it good to scare yourself from time to time? It’s so easy to get stuck in your own narrow rut.

“Sleeping is about a lot things. It could be about decluttering our brains. In order to acquire new information and process it,

The privilege of being human is that our brains are big enough to decide the fate of other creatures.

I always thought I was ordinary, but that is my own illusion, it seems. Ordinary is impossible. It’s more realistic to believe that we are all exceptional, that I, too, am singular, unique, that there has never been nor ever will be another me.

Beauty isn’t fleeting. Beauty is eternal. But . . . I’m not. I’m fleeting. That’s more the point.

‘I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.’ ”