Write or Die Challenge - Day Two

"To be or not to be?" That is not the question. We all have to be - it is an inevitability that comes with life. We are here, therefore we are, and therefore, we have to be, exist in some form of another. Unless, of course, this is all a dream. Some kind of funny joke created by a celestial being with a rotten sense of humor. But I don't believe that's the case. We are too complex, too concrete, too real to be a dream or a joke. We are. We live, we breathe, we laugh, we cry, we live. And the question is not "to be or not to be?" the question is "why?"

Why are we here? As playthings of some deity who takes pleasure in watching us squirm? I doubt it. This, all of this, is for a reason. But it is a reason we as humans will never know, so we must do our best to guess.

We are here for joy. We are here to smile and bring smiles to those around us. We are here to enjoy ourselves and be happy. We are here to do good. We are here to make life a good experience, however obsolete the life of one of us may ultimately be.

We are not here to make war. We are not here to kill, and we certainly are not here to waste our time worshiping false idols. We are not here to make each other miserable or have power. We are here simply because we are. One must make one's own assumptions after that point, but the fact remains that no deity or creator one could imagine or believe in would put us here to do evil. It is not rational, no matter how irrational the world may be in many other respects.

So why do we fight? Why do we suffer? Why do we bleed? It is because humans are selfish. We are naturally greedy, merciless, cruel creatures with a dire need for wealth and power. People fail to see that there is more to life than money and material objects, they fail to see that power does not lead to happiness. People fail to see that harming someone else won't lessen their pain, and that killing the demons they think they see in others won't silence their own demons. The world is ugly, its vision distorted by warped morales and impossible standards. It is far from right. How can we ever see peace if people don't change the way they look at the world?

Peace is such a funny concept. There is hardly a time in history that hasn't been blemished by war and the destruction it leaves. There have always been struggles for power, even in the most primitive times of early man. But why? People initially fought for necessities - food and shelter and things they needed to survive. But now what do we fight for? Money that won't buy us happiness. Power over others that we have no right to hold. Oil that will destroy the world we live in, and weapons to make obtaining all of this possible. What's the point? Why can't anyone else seem to see that there is so much more to all of this than what we think. That wealth is better measured in the friends you have and the memories you make than the size of your bank account?

When will anyone else see that all of this is just not worth it?