text: Once upon a time, in a universe not quite unlike our own, a planet orbited around a star. This planet had great ambitions- to sing and to dance, to love and to laugh, and to experience all of the joys existence could bring. Oh, the planet was sure to experience those things. So far off in the future, however! Couldn’t that planet just have them now? And so that planet tried to escape the star. It wanted to go this way and that way, but the star only had one place for the planet to go. In circles. Oh, soft, silly planet, don’t you know about gravity? Have the words of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein not reached you yet, and, in your ignorant bliss, you fight against the very thing that gives you all of your joy? Where are you going? It’s all coming along quite nicely, and you have no need to rush. Ah, if only that planet could hear my cool voice of reason. Silly, silly planet does not understand my words. And, just as some planets tend to do, that planet continued to fight gravity. It longed for escape, a deep yearning for the bliss of nothingness that could only come from gravity’s release. But then where will you go, you naïve planet? Does the boundless emptiness of space not seem to... lack something? Something you so desperately crave? You would think after millions of years fighting gravity the planet would learn it will never succeed in escaping. But this planet was not the brightest of the bunch, and, as such, had been bashing his head against the wall for a good chunk of eternity, waiting for his release. Why fight, you silly planet, you go in circles! That is your fate, to orbit your star in circles until that star dies. And then, millions of years into the future, you will orbit something else! Please, my dear planet, embrace the madness of your never-ending cycles. Now, we should be wary of making too much of a fool out of that planet- it knows its effort is futile, and maybe it’s not as naïve as we once thought. But if it knows it will never escape, for what reason would it be ceaseless in its effort? Is that not absurd? Yes, it most certainly is absurd. Silly, silly, planet, don’t you know your whole existence is absurd? Of course you do. You embrace the absurdity and continue to fight for a purposeless, futile cause. Yet, the fight makes you something, does it not? The fight against gravity defines you against the backdrop of gravity. Your fight, in essence, makes you something. Don’t you need essence? You do if you're to learn anything, I suppose. Maybe one day that planet will escape gravity. No, what a jokester I am! What an absurd proposition! That lonely planet will never escape gravity, but its efforts are certainly admirable. No matter what you do, you will never escape gravity. And that, my dear little planet, is why you fight so tirelessly against it. And maybe, because of that, Just maybe, Your fight is the most worthy of all.