indifference

an article by natasha bhatia

somehow, i always get the feeling human beings, at some point in their lives, begin believing life is a circle… and all of us individually, are right at the centre of it. it’s almost like a solar system if you think about it. you become the sun, and around you exists your community of people, your memories, your grief, your ambitions, all orbiting around your existence as though you are the thing holding everything together.

and it makes no sense to me.

because how can we be such a self-centred species when life isn’t going to stop when we die?

life means nothing to the universe.

i believe that deeply.

because the more i look at human beings & their existence, the more impossible it becomes to believe any of this was built around us individually.

one day, you, the person reading this, will disappear from the earth entirely, and nothing will pause with you. the traffic outside will continue moving. someone will still be laughing at a joke you’ll never hear. a mother will still be braiding her daughter’s hair before school. a child will still be born somewhere while somebody else is grieving. rain will still collect in potholes. birds will still wake up before the sun does. the sea will continue collapsing against the shore with the same rhythm it had before any of us even existed.

the earth will not crack open from grief.

it will simply continue.

and there is something devastating about that… but there is also something so damn beautiful.

because the earth; in itself, does not care enough about us to stop spinning.

perhaps that sounds neglectful, but i do not mean that cruelly.

i mean it in awe.

because the more i think about it, the more astonishing life becomes to me. there are billions of people carrying entire universes inside themselves, fears, memories, favourite songs, griefs they have never spoken aloud, and still the world moves forward as though none of it can interrupt time for very long.

human beings die every day and morning still arrives.

isn’t that unbelievable?

i think we spend our lives trying to convince ourselves we are more central to existence than we truly are because the alternative is a fact, that has the potential to be… rather terrifying. to realise that the universe is not orbiting around your heartbreak. that your absence will wound people, yes, but eventually even the people who love you most will continue living because they have to.

human beings survive each other every day.

we leave funerals and still stop for coffee on the way home. we cry ourselves sick and still answer emails the next morning.

life keeps moving.

relentlessly.

almost tenderly.

and i think that is what breaks my heart the most, not that life is meaningless, but that it is so alive despite meaninglessness. flowers still bloom with absolutely no understanding of what they are. a flower has no idea; that it is beautiful. rain does not fall for an audience. the ocean is not trying to be remembered, and the stars are not burning for us specifically. animals still don’t have a schedule to live up to….

these things… they simply exist.

briefly and beautifully.

before disappearing.

maybe we do too.

and strangely, i find comfort in that.

because if none of this truly matters to the universe, then we all are free… to simply be.

to be temporary, to be breathing.

to be… alive…. for a moment.

i think people are constantly trying to turn life into a story because stories are comforting. stories have structure. stories have a certain amount of control. stories have beginnings, and endings that make sense.

but the thing is, life does not feel like a story to me. it feels like standing in the middle of the ocean at night, looking up at a sky so endless that you suddenly understand how small you truly are…

small in a beautiful way… small like a candle in a city full of lights, candles and lanterns.

replaceable, one day? maybe. but still capable of warmth.

there is grief in realising that one day your room will exist without you in it. your favourite songs will continue playing in cafés for strangers who have never known your name. the people you love will slowly become versions of themselves that no longer include you.

as though you were only ever passing through.

and maybe we all are.

maybe that is the truth human beings spend their entire lives trying not to think about, that existence was never built around us individually. we are tiny interruptions within it. brief consciousnesses flickering on and off inside an ancient world that has survived wars, extinctions, floods, empires, love stories, funerals.

and still the sun rises every morning like nothing happened.

there is something so painfully beautiful about that to me.

because maybe life was never a circle with us at the centre.

maybe it is something far more enormous than that.

wildly alive.

wildly indifferent.

and maybe we were only ever tiny parts of it, passing through for a moment, believing the stars were watching us specifically, when really they were just burning the way they always had.