The bugs are gone. I noticed it years ago when I drove west through Kansas and never once had to smear a moth from my windshield. It was the kind of thing you don’t think about until it is missing. Then you think about it a lot.
When I was young, you could not go on a road trip without stopping at a gas station to scrape off the dead ones. They caked the front of the car like the aftermath of a battle. It was war, and they always lost. But now, there is no war. There are no bodies. Just long, clean stretches of road that do not hum with the sound of wings.
The world is changing, and it is changing in a way that does not shout but sighs. The way a store you always meant to visit one day quietly closes down. The way a neighbor’s house sits dark for weeks before you realize they have moved. It is the kind of death that does not announce itself. It simply ceases to be.
People talk about the end of things as if it will come with fire or thunder. They like explosions. They like spectacle. But the truth is, things do not end that way. They end when no one is looking. They end when a hundred small things change just enough that you wake up one morning and realize you live in a different place than you did before. The fish in the lake are smaller. The coffee costs more. The streetlights have been out for a week, and no one has come to fix them. It is all very quiet.
You can feel it in the way people talk. They do not speak of the future like they once did. When I was young, the future was a thing that stretched out ahead, full of plans and destinations. Now, people speak of it the way they speak of an unpaid bill, something looming and unpleasant, best ignored. They make do with less. They lower their expectations. They tell themselves this is normal.
And maybe it is. Maybe the world has always ended this way, not in a burst of light but in a slow, dimming fade. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. A world that shrinks a little each day until one day you wake up and realize the bugs are gone, and you never even said goodbye.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.