The Watcher
You think as you sit on your high mountaintop. The view from here is unique.
Looking to the left, you see what has been. To your right, what will be.
Civilizations come and go. Births and deaths of species. Of planets.
You sit here and think: what cursed privilege.
The Watcher.
Never to interact. Never to intercede. You know the future. You know where it all comes from.
Where it is going.
You see that birth is death... that love is strife... that order is chaos.
You think these things to yourself as the landscape changes. It's a terrible and wondrous play. All the creatures performing earnestly. The world stage trembles beneath the hordes and masses, but does not falter. Not, at least, for some time.
You fall in love with some. The truly earnest. The truly good. Those you fall for. You see their brief wink in time as a nova. They spawn new life and new ideals in their wake. (Nova is truly an apt name for these stars.)
Some others interest you too, like the one's who earn asylum. Intriguing, that they too have a similar role to your own. Except that their mountaintops reside in worlds of fancy, of mysticism, and of dread. They should not speak of their world, and yet they do. The picture they paint earns them asylum, briefly, until death.
Considering the extremely small amount of space this particular universe fits into, it's no wonder its creatures require of its inhabitants to share a similar worldview. Humans, generally, seem to be interested in the expansion of this worldview. However, the humans are also so desperately tied to their past that they do not recognize the thoughts that could propel their civilizations by hundreds of years. These individuals, though brilliant, are given asylum on account of their strangeness.
And the novas, which work earnestly to tie together the past and the future, are hardly given their due unless they are able to appeal immediately to the emotions of the present population. Even then, through no fault of the nova, the public majority will shun these efforts, either too dull to understand or too jealous to acknowledge the significance the nova's life has offered.
So you watch. You realize why people weep at loss. They do not have the view that you do, that in their time, for every loss, there is a gain. There is no true emptiness... not for a long time. These people should be in joy. They do no know what comes next.
Joy. You think on this for a moment longer. Joy is not a characteristic of your own. It cannot be. Joy is a characteristic only of those with limited perspective. Joy should be common. Perhaps humans deserve more credit.
But you ponder again: No. These creatures should be joyful. They will never have to suffer the Loss. What joy you would experience were you not so intimate with the end of things. They pretend that they know... but they do not know beyond the moment's horizon.
You want to intervene, but cannot. You are the Watcher. Your role is to foresee and to record. But have you not seen enough, with all time laid out for you? Have you not witnessed the Birth and Death countless times? The Gain and Loss of all things?
You want to intervene, if naught but to say this:
"Child of Life, be Merry!
For your time is one of Bliss
You have but a short time
To enjoy all that is Good
Nay, all that simply Is!
You do not know
That Before, there is Nothing
And After, it is as Before
There is simply Now, and Now
Is where there is Joy.
You are not the Watcher.
You are the Doer.
Do what is good and
Do what will linger on
After you have Gone.
I plead, for this One's sake,
Enjoy these Things."
This is what the Watcher would say.
But the Watcher will not intervene.
