He looked around, bewildered. A history buff, a cultured fanatic – Ade was no stranger to museums and exhibitions. Caesar, Napoleon, the Pharaohs of old – Ade was witnessing fragments held in glass, yet to be deciphered in his mental mind map. This was not short of an obsession. Tales of the ancients, Ade was firmly rooted in the belief that to see tomorrows world you have to commit to understanding yesterdays. This sheer responsibility trespassed the bounds of this being  reduced to a hobby as it transformed to an oath to a committed path.

How many legacies had come and gone? Events that shook humanity at a moment on a timeline that stretches before humanity itself. He looked back at the revolutions, the renaissances, the wars, the famines – the heroes that made one proud to be part of this remarkable conscious creation, and the villains that made one ashamed in affiliation with such beasts. What remained of those tyrants that once squeezed the water of the oceans and turned it to blood? Oppressors that fell victim to their own mortality – seduced by the illusion of their power and status.

He saw the jewels and crowns, grandeur and luxury. Yet how long did each leader and chief battle for his or her empire to be looked on almost in pity? What price did they pay for their possessions that now lay for all to see while they were no longer here to smirk at the admiring eyes? The fear, the jealousy, the respect, the love – the human emotions that they desired relentlessly to mould the masses to feel for them – what did those efforts now mean?

Ade found in history was science and art. It was religion and philosophy. It was then, it is now, it is the framework for what will be. Ade’s ambition to study for the truth was inspiring. Yet for a moment, his eyes had sunken – a spark was lost. For he was just a spectator rather than an active piece – his destiny, like most others, did not have a place for him on a timeline that holds any lasting meaning.

Ade got home that night buried in his thoughts. What legacy is worth living? How can anything that is a spec on a timeline translate to meaning? He sighed deeply. For in himself he could see both the demons, and the saints. So many questions as curiosity was meeting the helplessness of being what is known as a human. What gives someone meaning on this journey? What significance does any influence exert in just a life’s span, if you are never able to see the fruits of action blossom? At what age does history itself become obsolete?

He wrote these thoughts in the navy/cream pad kept locked in the drawer by the window of his room, sighing heavily as he mentally prepared himself for another week of nine to fives. Yet his work was just a mundane daydream – merely counting down for 17.01 so he could return back to his reality as more questions would feed his insomnia daily.

The colours of his pad are preserved as though new, as they are now looked on. Though nothing but decomposed matter remains of his physical being – his works had found their place in the same museum on the other side of the glass. People observing his legacy the same way he once looked at others. With the same awe, the same yearning, the same curiosity. Though Ade shall never know… how history tells his tale.