Every end leads to a new beginning, at least that’s what they tell us. I don’t know how true I really is, but it’s what we are raised to believe. Maybe it’s because they think we are afraid, or maybe it’s because they are. Either way from the moment we begin our education we are told that, long before we were born, long before our time, this place was not ours, it was inhabited by life unlike ours, different. But that’s all they ever tell us about them, that’s all that they ever tell us about what it was like before we arrived. We never hear about these creatures, how they looked or what language they spoke or even if they did speak. They don’t even tell us what this planet looked like before us, but I guess they believe it’s irrelevant. We are just closed off from all of this because society doesn’t want us to know, nobody argues with that and blindly accepts that this is the way things were and have always been, just accept that we won’t know, or accept that there is nothing else to know. Anyway, all we ever learn about is our culture, how our ancestors landed on this planet, seeing that this was a chance for them to save not only themselves, but this world. They arrive to see misery and pain only to change it to happiness and fortune. Building settlements and growing, just like any other species, except we survive and everything else that once inhabited this planet doesn’t. They say that all other life was wiped out because it was too weak, and unlike us, didn’t possess the qualities needed to adapt and to eventually rule, I don’t think that’s the case but I never really get a chance to argue over it, since nobody really knows what happened. And that’s all of it, all we ever need to know about our history, just this one story that we go through year after year just to make sure that we don’t forget it.
I remember we used to have this old book when I was little, I found it in a dusty, long forgotten library and bought it home. I read it every night and can you believe how amazingly ridiculous it was! The author told you of this planet, not like ours, where the ground beneath your feet was a lush green and the sky above you was bright blue, but that’s not even the craziest part, the sky actually changed colour! The book said that when it was night the sky was a blue like the kind you would get at the very depths of the ocean, and when it rained it became a melancholy grey to accompany the general mood you get when you are attacked with freezing water on a windy day which falls from the sky and onto your unsuspecting face. Also these strange creatures floated in the sky, white monsters that seemed to be made of fluff but they weren’t, the book said that if you ever came close enough to touch one you couldn’t, it would just slip through your fingers, because they weren’t actually solid. These were called “clouds”. But that wasn’t the only thing in the sky, at night it said that you could see lights, everywhere you looked, tiny lights that just hung there looking down at you, these were as he described them, “glowing stars” which seemed strange since the stars we have don’t light up and certainly don’t glow. They are planets in our galaxy but you can never just see them if you look up into the sky, they are only visible in open space, and even then barely. Every time I read this book it felt so nostalgic, as though I was there, as though I knew this place and breathed the same air and saw the same clouds and stars above me. I felt as I was so close to all of this, but I could never grasp it, never come close enough to really see, but close enough so I could imagine. But I was little back then and I dismissed any serious thoughts on this book. Nevertheless I did tell everyone about it, but they all laughed it off and just like me back then, didn’t take it too seriously. I agreed with them, for a while at least.
I didn’t notice any of it at first but I soon became aware at how much time I spent looking at our permanently lilac sky, wishing that it could change colour, even for a few seconds. Any colour would do, even if it was a really ugly one. I thought about the world that these creatures must have lived in and I wondered if I could live there too. Would I even survive? Would anyone have actually survived in a place like that? But I couldn’t answer any of these questions, because our sky stayed the same monochrome tone, and no strange objects floated around up there, and our ground was crumbling charcoal, and that was how it was going to stay, very probably forever, or at least as long as we were around. As much as I hated to admit this, our world was here and real, that world was just in somebody’s imagination.
They always tell us that every end leads to a new beginning, maybe so when our world is invaded and changed by someone else, we will accept it because we know it leads to a better future. But what will happen to us then? We never get told about the fate that befell the ones who lived on this planet before us, they get forgotten and erased. Their existence is and was unimportant, unnecessary, to everyone but me. Because I want to know and I wish that I did, I wish I could see what they saw, what if billions of years ago the sky did change colour and the ground was alive and green, and the world was just like in that book. It’s a shame that I’ll never know though, I guess I’ll just have to keep on living on planet Earth and wait for another new beginning, my new beginning.