Hello my mortal friend, welcome to the world of self deceit. When you really need to get something done, sometimes you say, I am doing this for my parents, for my children, for my descendants, or maybe for humanity. I have some bitter sweet news -We are egocentric beings at the core. It's a survival instinct for one to care for their wellbeing. Some people even go as far as taking a life to spare their own. This is even justified in the court of law in the form of self defense.
Let's shift to a different dimension, shall we? Your father is a wealthy man but some of his activities of acquiring land to establish an industry of the future displaced me and my family. I come to you, enraged, a penknife in my right hand, threatening to skin you alive if you don't get your father to relinquish our land. I don't actually plan on doing it, but only I know this. I brandish my knife at you, all your nerves scream only one thing "This is a merchant of death, I must survive!". You want to protect your own life at all costs. Little do I know that you own a gun, and not just for show.You pull the trigger. It's a mortal wound and I can feel myself losing grasp of this world. You just realize, "I killed a human!". Despite you owning a gun you had never actually used it. Your father being one of the richest men in the world had offered you one for "protection". You observe a moment of silence, not for the dead but because the amount of data being fed into your brain in form of emotions is too much to handle. Finally your senses are coming back. You scream, "What have I done?".
In my last moments as my life flashes before my eyes, I am enlightened, I come to a realization that it wasn't your fault. It is just natural survival instinct for one to care for their life over others. I call it selfishness. We practice the sin of taking from others to satisfy our own needs. We take away money from both the rich and the poor alike, innocence from both the weak and the strong, life from both the unsuspecting and those who threaten our survival. Sometimes we are so despicable that we even do it out of greed. It is the reason why we wage war on others, sometimes not even to save our own lives but to secure resources that will be necessary for us to have a better life. We lay waste to years of hardwork of fellow humans, giving one reason or another on why we are doing it. A reason that sounds reasonable to other humans. After all, we want to justify our actions. This death will be no different than how man brings down his knife on a goat to secure nutrients for his survival. It's just the natural order of things. I was never the alpha male, not even a beta, just fodder to aid in the great survival of human kind. It seems like lady destiny delt me the worst cards. In my next life perhaps I will not be as temperamental and will lean toward dialogue."Don't be sad my friend, it wasn't your fault. It was you survival instinct. It's both a beauty and an ugliness of mankind". I mutter my last words to you thinking that it will make you feel better.
Despite my enlightenment about the egocentric nature of humans, I know that as a species we have the ability to make choices. Choices not as simple as 'if statements' in a computer program but choices that can go against the very nature of our being! That is why, my mortal friend, even after you pulled the trigger out of the need for survival, you still had a flux of emotions into you and you knew then, that what you had done was not your best cause of action. After all, what we value most after own life are the lives of fellow humans. It's not just the selfishness we have in us but the compassion too. As I fade into a deep dreamless slumber, I say to myself. "Sometimes only in death do you realize what could have been". My mortal friend, I pray that you realize what could have been before that scythe comes down on your neck.