Work Wasted?

This morning I thought about a web site that is now gone. I had breathed good life into its bones. Is it true that many thousands of hours of work were wasted? Is it true that all of the hours invested in coding, designing and refining the web site will be of no practical value, that is to say of no importance to any employer? I think that these conclusions are all true. All of that work was completely wasted. Probably it is true I could have been in coma and achieved the same result of nothing or close to nothing.

Work as an end to itself is a difficult concept to grasp. I often feel dismay about mountains of work that I have performed with no apparent reward and no trace of the work ever having been performed, a depressing outcome for an ego that looks for rewards.

So then I call upon my guide No-Ego, which apprises me of the view from up in the watchtower. I see over the horizon a future (or is it the past?) in which humanity does not exist (or does not exist yet), and it chills me, the thought not only of my own extinction but of my entire species, but it is also a sobering observation. It seems that all human accomplishments are doomed, because that is the nature of human accomplishments. Not only the things that I do, but even the works of kings and the fabulous artifacts of genius are temporary. Every song, story, building, machine and artwork pass from all recollection. Our planet is doomed according to the current thinking of astrophysicists. We are, all of us, building castles in the sand before the tide--a consolation for anyone who has watched some of his castles be devoured by an early tide.

Living in a finite existence, one grows accustomed to thinking in terms of time, of beginnings and endings, alpha and omega, but the cycle does not end. There is no end and no beginning, so what will come will be followed. Better, worse, greater, smaller, weaker, stronger, different, same, all are manifestations of the one. I cannot and I will not be more specific than that, because I am an ant crawling on a mound of mud on an island in an archipelago--about as aware of what is going on as that.