bug on a windshield
You're whizzing down the highway on a day so hot you can see waves rising from the asphalt, cool in your air-conditioned cabin. Insects ... so mechanically dumb, yet free ... fly straight into your windshield. With an inaudible splat, their meaningless lives are instantly over. The only remnant of their existence is a smear of blood and guts. You feel nothing and continue driving.
It's as close to being God as you'll ever get. One squirt of washer fluid, a few swipes of the wiper, and everything's erased.
Does the ugly, worthless bug have a rudimentary consciousness which feels existential terror at the moment of impact? I'm sure that humans feel a vast, empty dread during that final instant when you realize the rest of eternity will chug along just fine without you. My idea of hell would be to have that moment stretched out interminably ... never arriving at death's ultimate peace, only strung across limbo and teased with a false promise forever.
In a sense, that's the primary condition of being alive. We all know that the windshield's somewhere down the highway, speeding toward us.
