Have you ever really considered what it means to be human, to be alive? I was looking at my mom the other day, and wondered about the marvel of how we’re all so different, yet alike at the same time. Sometimes I reduce us to “walking bags of electrified salt water”. Other times, I marvel at the engineering that went into each and every one of us. How is it, I can live happily with her, yet, my siblings could not? What drives one person to be angry all the time and another to be laissez faire?
With some 7+/- billion of us walking around down here with different personalities, it’s truly a wonder how we have made it this far. We talk about having “chemistry one with another”. Often, this is code for did we find the “one” or when making new friends and acquaintances, did we mesh? Why are some people not able to get along with themselves, let alone anyone else? What causes anger, or frustration, or happiness? Yes, circumstances play a part in them, but it’s not like at the autopsy we can find these emotions within them.
Why is it when I met one person in the winter of 2016, I felt an instant connection with them on that particular day, when I felt something completely opposite towards them earlier in late 2015 at our initial meeting?
Much of what happens in life feels like it is outside of our control, outside of our ability to predict, to rationally understand. I had a dear friend die of cancer, in the summer of 2018 who was still making a difference in many lives when hers was cut short.
Perhaps her calling had been fulfilled….Truth be told, her legacy is residing in each of the lives she touched – she too is like this flower, the seeds which she planted are blooming (more) abundantly.
But…what does it really mean to die? Is it when the electricity is cut off from a body? Does a massive short circuit happen and then boom, lights out? Or is there something more? Some it would seem, die before they lived. But what does it mean to be alive? Is it simply because your breathing or when you discover why you’re here in the first place? What if you never make that discovery? Are we then to brace for impact should our paths cross?
How is it life can be framed from the perspective of beauty and joy coming from loss? We want everything to be perfect, to be pain free. We want to have the people we care most about with us forever, however, reality provides just the opposite, so what is it that allows for beauty from the ashes? Is it because we’re made of the same substances – carbon and energy?
Perhaps it really is that, nothing grows on the mountaintop…but, wild flowers decorate the valley floors with their blooms popping out in vibrant colors — After a rain, a releasing of even more carbon and energy into the atmosphere. Let us then just be here in the now, that we might hear and live before we die, before the lights go out.
- Fin
Single Slice of Cheese 