REFLECTION ON EXTINCTION

Reflection on the Abyss of Nonexistence

As I stare into the abyss of nonexistence, I find myself asking what comes next. The recognition is not abstract; it is immediate, intimate, and unnerving. At any moment, I may not exist. The pulse of thought, the awareness of being, could stop, and with it, everything that ever seemed real to me.

At this age, the urge to accomplish something new fades before the more haunting desire to leave a mark, an imprint, some trace that I was here. Yet even that ambition feels hollow when viewed through the lens of eternity. Ecclesiastes said it plainly: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. The striving, the recording, the echo of one’s name, it all dissolves in the end. The universe neither remembers nor forgets. It simply continues, indifferent to the brief flicker of one consciousness.

Still, the question remains: What do I want to do, knowing that oblivion is inevitable? The answer shifts with the hour. Some moments call for defiance, to write, to speak, to think, to matter, as though sheer will could push back the darkness. At other times, resignation takes its place. What good are footprints in sand, the tide is sure to erase?

I realize that what frightens me most is not death itself, but the extinction of awareness. The cessation of consciousness, the extinguishing of I. Reality will go on, the stars will burn, the earth will turn, but I will not know it. The world will be as it always was, but without me in it, and in that sense, to me it will not exist at all.

This abyss, this nothingness, waits patiently. It is not cruel, merely inevitable. I feel its pull, subtle yet constant, and I wrestle with the question of whether to resist or hasten the descent. The impulse to “speed the journey” is less about despair than about control—the last flicker of agency in a life where even time no longer negotiates.

But perhaps the real act of defiance is not surrendering to the abyss, nor denying it exists, but standing at its edge, fully aware, unblinking, and still thinking. To acknowledge the darkness without stepping into it. To observe it with the same curiosity that once explored love, beauty, and truth.

If there is any meaning left to claim, it lies here, in the act of reflection itself. The abyss takes everything but consciousness, and until that final instant, thought remains the only rebellion.

wjs