Trés Mediocre

*3 flash fiction pieces

Starfish

How do I proceed? One at a time.

All I can see here is suffering. Everyone competing, miserable at their constant lack of ability to measure up to some monolithic cultural ideal. Their souls are starving.

This world looks normal, but it feels wrong. The leaders are corrupt. The divisions are stark. The successful are beyond decadent. The poor wake up under a merciless sun, sell their daylight for whatever they can get.

The saddest thing is the resignation. The “This is just the way it is”. Everyone’s downtrodden, comparing themselves to each other. The system is designed for that. It can’t function without insecurity and fear. It’s a tremendously efficient machine, epic and eternally churning, oiled with the blood and sweat of faceless millions. Nothing can be done, or so it’s believed.

Man is the halfway point between animal and angel. This place is trending back towards the animal. I have to help steer it towards the angelic, towards eternity.

Being good is sixty percent understanding and forty percent forgiveness. That’s why I’m going to stay and try to help.

I’ll have to take the “starfish on the beach” route with this place. You know, the old story. A man is walking on a beach covered with starfish that’ve been left there by high tide. He comes across another man picking up each starfish one at a time and throwing them back into the water where they belong.