When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped rips, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.

“What’s happened to me?” he thought.

That’s how it’s done, folks. If you ever plan to write a book, follow Kafka’s example. As opening lines go, it’s perfect. The remainder of the book is a masterpiece, a one-sitting, forty or so page read, and highly recommended by the Areopagus. It’s a classic of modern literature, though no one is precisely certain of Kafka’s intent.

Nevertheless, every time I read those striking opening lines I ask myself, why wouldn’t I see myself as a monstrous vermin, even under normal circumstances? I’m quite convinced that most other species, terrestrial or not, with the possible exception of dogs and cats, would see me as a monstrous vermin–and certainly what we consider as monstrous vermin would see me that way. So is it my personhood that blinds me? Is it my existence within humanity that prevents an objective view from without?

Certainly, but let’s delve a bit deeper. What is there about my nature, or yours for that matter, that precludes our classification as just other vermin? Is there any fact or condition about the universe which mitigates our condition as vermin? Do we merely awake as lifeforms each morning, or is there something non-verminous in our blood? Gregor did not seem to think so. Indeed, his life resembled the vermin we detest: scurrying about to survive, only surviving to a mundane, monotonous existence of daily drudgery, and the pressures of existence. Is there more, or are we but sophisticated insects?

Some have suggested consciousness sets us apart from the vermin. But conceived as no more than emergent property of matter, consciousness only appears to add the pain of the realization of our discovery that we are indeed vermin. Many have stared down this abyss and embraced this nothingness. I applaud them for their courage. Others, with consciousness in tow, have dreamed that our choices somehow are the universal mitigators that free us from the nothingness.

“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream.

And it’s not a dream. We are vermin. Of course, one might convince himself that purpose and meaning may be created through choices, existential leaps, action, or a thousand other things. But these are the dreams of the vermin. It’s as Seth Brundell remarked in the remake of The Fly: I was an insect who dreamt he was a man, and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the insect is awake.”

And be we vermin, it’s a ghastly verminitude. The very consciousness that awakens us to our condition, awakens us to the horror of our nature. For insects are brutal, as Brundell also noted, but we humans are a fully aware, conscious, cruel vermin…vermin who delight in the brutality of our existence. There’s more evil in a schoolyard taunt, than in the combined ravages, pain, death, and pillage wrought by the entire insect world in all of recorded history, and beyond.

Yet, this just may be the mitigating factor of the universe. For when we vermin wake in the morning, we sense that we are more than scurrying creatures, bereft of meaning, purpose, and hope. The very evil that we confront is a clue that larger forces are at work. Indeed, there’s more to us than meets our fleshly, verminous eyes:

“From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the exact times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.'”

And I’m certain I read somewhere that “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. The mystery of Godliness is great: that God–if I may dare say it–became as one of the vermin, lighting the way to meaning, purpose, and hope. Men dreamt that they were animals, and reveled in it. But light has come into the world; the time for dreaming is ended for those willing to come into the light, rather than scurrying for dark corners. Think upon such things when you awake.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s masterpiece, Ozymandias, is an essential. And with salute to the upcoming Watchmen release, I encourage you to take a moment and read Shelley’s sonnet if you haven’t previously, or reacquaint yourself if you have:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

If you can read this poem and remain unmoved, your heart is hewn from the same stone Of that colossal wreck. The imagery of this poem haunts me: the wasteland stretching far and away, the windswept sand battering the shatter’d visage, the vanity of power, nature’s and time’s ultimate conquest over human folly, and the emptiness of existence.

And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” How many rulers throughout the ages have echoed this sentiment? How many of the influential, the wealthy, the powerful? Who’s not felt the “proud man’s contumely?” On a lesser scale, does not this sentiment even crop up within your small set? Within your family perhaps? Your church? Your place of employment?

Meaningless! Meaningless! said the preacher. And he was right. How our works suppurate and decay with the onslaught of unfettered time, works of we, the present unknowns, most of all. Yet how many Pharaohs of Egypt can you name? Chinese Dynastics? I wager few within our own present culture are able to name all American Presidents, much less the most powerful and influential men and women of times long past.

Sobering, indeed, and crippling when Shelley’s boundless and bare vision adds a desolate texture to our human predicament: as some of your own poets have said: we are alone. We are meaningless. We are purposeless. We are absurd.

Without God, that is. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all of this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.