An Angel's Lament

It is said that the universe and the existence itself began in a “big bang”. While it doesn’t quite tell the entire story, I’m just more surprised humans came up with such a wild idea. How can I be so sure you ask? Because I was there of course.

I am God…. Or I would like to say, but He was my progenitor. I never asked how He came to exist nor do I wish to be burdened with that knowledge. I understand that humans refer to His servants as angels. Unfortunately for me, however, there is only one Angel- me.

When I first opened my eyes all those millennia ago, I was greeted by God and my ‘colleague’; I suppose you would call him Satan. It would seem he had woken up just a bit before I did. God said He didn’t know why we happened to pop into existence but we soon figured it out. He had initiated the big bang and eventually, life itself had sprouted from the dark abyss. With the beginning of life, the need to balance the good and bad arose and so did we.

We visited infinite planets and galaxies. You might have thought this was easy given that our existence isn’t tethered to your reality, but having to actually travel to reach our destinations was an unfortunate consequence of ‘space’. Each time we discovered a seed of life; God pushed it along, helped it grow and as Earth scientists call it, ‘evolve’. After a few millennia, it would reach its peak and stop evolving. God would then lose interest and we’d move on. To the next, to the next, to the next.

Our latest destination- Earth. You see, God had gotten a tad tired of endless repetition so when we found another planet where life seemed to have reached the end of its natural evolution, He turned to us.

“Can one of you make this more interesting?”, He asked.

“Perhaps bestow upon them some knowledge?”, I suggested, assuming that the goal was to help them evolve further. It wasn’t.

“Or…”

Satan began to speak and I was about to stop him from suggesting anything….. Satanic, for lack of a better term. But unlike the last hundred revolting ideas that’d come from him, this time God was interested.

“Or, we could restart it from scratch. There’s a conveniently placed belt of space rock around us, let’s fling them at the planet until it becomes barren and dead.”

“You wish to wipe out an entire planet?”, I asked.

“Do not overdo it, Satan”, God said.

I sighed with relief, of course, God wasn’t going to-

“Just use one space rock.”

Just as He had once declared ‘let there be light’ at the beginning of the universe, He signalled for the biggest extinction-level disaster in the universe’s history.

The three of us watched from above and Satan was particularly gleeful, as the mighty dinosaurs vanished. One after one.

“Do not fear little one, this planet will not die yet,” God told me.

I did not understand the significance of his statement until life once again bounced back in abundance. While the age of dinosaurs had passed, life continued, as it always does. One by one, life evolved and died. The cycle continued, just as it always did. I wish my words could do the wondrous cycle of life justice but it’s one of those things you can’t fully comprehend unless you witness it yourself.

“Now would you look at that. Some fur-less creature is chucking things around and they’re actually hunting with tools!”

Satan laughed at the primitive human but he and I knew that this just might be what God was looking for.

At one point, God himself went and provided them with fire….. And the rest is history. The wheel, mastering of metal, clocks, compasses, oh the wonders they managed to create with so little! Every time you humans discovered something new it left me and Satan in shock and left God with extreme satisfaction. It was not long before your kind populated the entire planet, save the two polar ends. They rose to the top of the food chain. Kings of the planet. Oh, how I wished it ended there.

Other species have inter-tribe conflict, but none compared to visceral spite held by humans. Battles that lasted years, rivalries that continued for generations. Satan watched in ecstasy when you humans somehow came up with slavery. Eventually, it seemed like you could sense our presence, and religion was its consequence. The same man who treated his fellow human as he would the dirt he stands on, would preach about following the example of God five minutes later.

It was a horrendous thing to watch and yet all He would do is watch on silently doing nothing, seeing something I did not. Every once in a while, there would come men who you would love until the end of times, and other times there would be men humanity wished never existed. For every Buddha there was a Mao, for every Gandhi there was a Hitler. For every life saved there were a hundred lost.

I wondered if there would ever come a time when humanity could be at peace. But of course, there wouldn’t be. Neverending chaos was the only constant for your species. Humans constantly evolved through strife and grief. If necessity was the mother of invention, torment was the mother of evolution.

Satan seemed to understand you better than I did, so I asked him what he thought of your pathologically self-destructive species, apologies for the phrasing.

“Self-destructive?”, he asked me, as though it was an idea so far-fetched that I would need to get checked.

“They fight over resources, but the wars that cause the real damage are always due to the self-imposed identities they themselves created.”

“You mean Adolf?”

“Hitler was not the first, and don’t expect me to believe he will be the last.”

At this point I got a bit agitated, it’s not like I was giving him new information. Why he would defend your species was beyond me.

“While I would love to sit here and tell you that humans, at their core are a rotten and self-centred species that do nothing but destroy, that’s simply not the case.”

“How can you say that? Murder and molestation are commonplace, slavery and-”

“And humans help each other get up from the pits of their suffering. Slavery is no longer the plague it once was, multiple actual plagues have been eviscerated and their ingenuity got them to the moon. Do you not remember Gandhi? Further back there was Jesus and more recently there was Malala.”

“The exceptions are not the rule.”

“And yet you focus on the worst parts, we’ve both seen stupid humans crying over the loss of a loved one. They are empathetic enough to cry for other people’s suffering even. It shouldn't be the literal Devil trying to convince you about the good in humanity, O’ great Angel.”

Even though my arguments were torn apart I was far from convinced. God probably heard our squabble and chose not to intervene, it was something I needed to see for myself.

I looked on and on, searching for something to show me humanity's underlying nature. I found an old man and a young woman on the top of a building. The girl…. Was about to jump.

The man just looked at her, and she stared back as though it was an awkward conversation neither knew how to begin.

“Who are you?” The girl asked.

They weren’t acquainted it seemed, so I wondered why the old man was there. Was he the one who chased her to the roof? Was she planning to die in order to escape from her pursuer? As always, I assumed the worst.

“Does it matter child? I’m just an old man trying to stop something awful from happening. Wouldn’t want that on my conscience would I.”

My thoughts were in disarray. If he wasn’t the cause and he wasn’t related to her, what could a stranger possibly be doing there?

“So you’re just being selfish then? Go away.”

“Selfish?” The man chuckled. “I would say you’re far more selfish than I am in that regard.”

“How is this selfish! Jumping would be the most selfless thing I could ever do! Nobody would ever have to deal with me again.”

“Ho? And arbitrarily deciding that not only all the people you know now, but all those you will know in the future will loathe you isn’t? Myself, I’d call that the height of arrogance.”

The girl was shaken, the man seemed to have gotten her attention.

“Why- What?? It’s not arrogant to assume that the world loathes useless people, it’s called common sense.”

“My my, and who would call you useless?”

“Mom, dad, my friends, my cat, me….”

“Well then, if at all they do they’re all simply wrong aren’t they?”

“Wrong? What-”

“Anyone who can research and find the tallest building in the city which also had the most easily accessible roof and could find her way there on her own wouldn’t exactly be useless would she. Misguided perhaps, her effort could be far more useful in something else.”

“Like what? It’s not like anything I do is worth anything anyway. I can’t cook, I flunk my exams, I fumble around uselessly at my part-time, I can’t teach my cat to not be scared of stairs, I-”

“It seems you confuse failure with uselessness child. We’ve all failed tremendously in our lives. Some lost their children due to terrible mistakes, and some can’t pass an exam or two. It’s always the aftermath we must look at to truly know who a person is. If one decided they were useless for struggling and ended up dead, then they are indeed useless. If they decided to give life a try and attempt to turn it around, regardless of having the ability, isn’t that person truly commendable?”

The girl was bawling on the ground, she’d gotten down from the ledge ages ago. Each time the old man spoke she seemed to get closer to reality.

“But-but I can’t do it! I can't do anything!”

“Then you can consider a change of career, some things just aren’t for you.”

“Thank you, thank you so much…. I almost-”

The girl had completely gotten out of her trance. It seemed to me at least that her eyes gleamed with new vigour.

“Holy shit it’s my cat’s lunchtime! What do I do!!”

“Mrroowwww”

A chubby little feline came slowly from the door and ran toward the girl, clearly her cat.

“It seems there’s someone here for you my child.” The old man laughed heartily.

I almost forgot I was there and had to shake myself from watching the scene any longer. I went back to Satan and God and said nothing, what I found was my peace.

I later learnt that the old man himself was there to do what he stopped the girl from doing. But her being there instantly activated something in him. Something good. The old man lost his own children a few weeks prior to a car accident which he blamed himself for. He managed to find something in the girl, and she in turn in him.

I tell you this in hopes that you do not make the same mistake I did, in hopes that perhaps this could boost your faith in yourself and your entire species. It was a very simple lesson I learned that day.

Humanity was not perfect, humanity made mistakes, but humanity was undoubtedly good.