The thickly sweet scent of summer rain lingers in the breath of the garden in which I lay. The thick blades of summer grass hold me softly, as a lover would. All around me is a world of its own. This one is not ruled by humans but by thousands of species of different insects. Each with its own societal structures, bustling around, hidden in blades of grass. They wonder not for what lies above them. They care not for the cosmos of their own vast world. To them, I am nothing else but a massive predator who likes to step on and kill them. Sometimes I wish that was the case for me. But I cannot. I have heard this described to be both humanity’s boon and its curse; we cannot help but ponder and yearn for what is out of our reach. And I am a slave to nature as any other.

The dome of the night is sprinkled with the light of a thousand stars, so far away that they show up as mere dots on a celestial plane. Each one of those dots has its own system of planets, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. And in those bodies are intelligent species so alien from our own, each with their own social structures, sovereign states, and systems of belief. Landscapes populated by flora and fauna that are extraordinary beyond anything even the wildest depths the human imagination can conjure. Space-faring empires that span systems, imposing their rule of law over hundreds of planets. Cosmic horrors that would make even the monsters of Lovecraft shudder. I am not limited by any physical constraints, for with the infinity of space comes the infinity of possibility. 

I reach my arms out, trying to graze my fingertips along the blanket of midnight that drapes over this Earth. But I know the truth is that those twinkling lights sprinkled across that sea of darkness are thousands and millions of lightyears away. I will never see those stars. I will never wander those planets. I will never witness the unbelievability of alien life. No one in my life will. Nor in the life of my children or my children’s children. A wave of emotion washes over me, threatening to drown me. This is the curse of humanity: to want what we cannot have. I want to rage at the injustice of it all. What being would be so cruel as to put such unimaginable beauty so immensely far away and yet let it appear just beyond my fingertips? Why are we denied the right to the stars? Have we not suffered enough?

But my anger is in vain. The universe is vast. Immensely, unimaginably vast. And I am so small. So insignificant. Just another tiny instrument in the symphony that is the song of humanity. A song that began 400,000 years ago and will continue long after I have moved from this life onto the next. Humanity will continue even when my bones have long settled into the earth from whence we came. All that I do is nothing more than a shout into the wind.

As my anger was transforming into a deep sadness, I heard the sound of a melodious mockingbird singing its heart out. I wrestled my gaze from the cosmos to watch the little bird sing. And sing it did. It sang, and sang, and sang, and sang. To whom it was calling out, I did not know. It was a song I’d heard a million times before. In the morning when I first woke up, during school sitting in my classroom, and at night lying in my bed. It was nothing new, and yet for some reason, I was entranced. What importance did this one insignificant mockingbird have in the grand scheme of life? Life would go on long after it had passed. It was just one useless bolt in the great machine of life. And yet still, it sang. 

At that moment, I realized that my anger was misplaced. It is our continued struggle in spite of the insignificance of humanity―our continued will to live―in the face of inevitability, that gives us beauty. Just like the little mockingbird, as individuals, the only thing we truly have in life is to shout into the wind. But together, these shouts create the chorus that is the song of humanity. Better to shout into the wind than to bear the burden of existence in silence. Maybe somebody out there will hear.

I am William Adimora, and this is my shout.