Ever pondered on your own mortality? I recently have, and on a much grander scale at that.

It started today when I saw my grandfather struggling to climb up a parking lot ramp in the mountains (due to the low levels of oxygen that high up) made me realize what a fleeting thing youth, and more importantly, life, is. Not too long from now, I'll be old and struggling to complete some menial task while having my grandchildren feel sorry for me.

4500 meters up a frozen mountain, a fact that I've always argued with fundamentalists become glaringly apparent to me. The Earth is largely not habitable for humans. I've been to Antarctica, tops of glacier mountains, scorching hot deserts and hostile oceans and it should be obvious to anyone who has seen atleast a little of the world, such as myself, that the Earth blows for us Homo Sapiens.

In my hotel room, I picked up a copy of National Geographic on the way and saw articles with illustrations of prehistoric ocean predators. Holy shit they were beasts in every sense of the word. You look at these creatures and can't help but be in awe. Ocean-dwelling reptiles the size of large yachts with teeth as big as bananas were abound just a few hundred million years ago (yes, a few, considering the age of our planet). The same strength and ferocity can also be seen on land during that epoch of our planet's history. Consider this, if a giant hunk of rock didn't strike the earth some 700 million years ago, we wouldn't exist. Mammals during that time were nothing more than little rodent-like creatures that hid in the bushes in fear of their reptilian overlords. It was 'luck' that we possessed a mutation that would help us ability survive the cold and inherit the planet.

How does this all relate to mortality? Well. Firstly, our lives are short even on our own tiny scale, let alone the planet's, as my grandfather's struggle up a ramp will attest to. Second, our life as a species has also been relatively short, in a sense that we have only been on this Earth for a very short time. Who knows what natural cataclysm in the future will bring about an end to our species and bring about a new dominant organism? Third, our lives are constantly in a tenuous balance with our environment. As the hostile environments I mentioned before prove, the Earth was clearly not made for our survival. We carved out our existence by struggling against Mother Nature, not by her assistance. And even when we have created our little havens on this planet, nature has her way of invading them. Influenza, earthquakes, AIDS, tsunamis, blizzards, you name it.

At this point I think I'm just rambling. But atleast I'm having fun while I'm at it. Life, in all aspects and scales, is short, so who really cares if what you do has some greater meaning or not? Let me ramble.