Monday, November 4, 2024
life is strange, often beautiful, then you die
Life emerges, has its day, departs to nowhere, and remains unknown, except for we persons who may remember a life.
We are the only species that conceives futures and may remember, briefly, long, maybe canonically, maybe historically. But only persons do that, not the deer, not the poor mayfly.
Say what you will about the cosmos. Investigate until you die. Yet,
the glorious reality of it all is us: the only known intelligence in the galaxy, the only intelligence on Earth that inquires persistently.
We are the only form of life which may design futures which may be actualized.
A person may contribute to the intergenerational relay of Our evolving, thanks to which Our evolving is enriched, and maybe furthered.
To contribute to one’s Time is how the centripetal, undefinable Telos of Our evolving composes and advances itself.
I’m struck by obituaries of famous persons, often those whose Mark seems forgotten until they die, which warrants an obituary in major media because they contributed to Our relay of generations.
But flowers across a field, children in flows of play, have their own integrity, enjoying the light, even without capacity to know that.
Like drops of water are vital to there being a focal oasis—like singular votes are vital for there being more democratic life—singular lives are all there is for composing horizonal appeals in Our evolving.
In the long run—in the very, very long run: long after the galaxy Andromeda merges with the Milky Way, billions of years ahead—all galaxies will become so distant from each other that Contact will be only possible within each one galaxy in the endless Void which has no ultimate meaning, no purpose, beyond the intelligence which gives purpose to the lives we are.
It is enough. You must love the potential, the chances, the curiosity, endless learning, enjoyment, and wonder that you have—you have, maybe to leave a Mark on Earth of archival lastingness, even for archaeological re-discovery centuries ahead.
We are alive! We are the best of the cosmos so far.
Here’s a related comment I posted at a NY Times article yesterday, about meaningless cosmic voids, congruent with the musings
of a theoretical physicist.
Yet, I’m more interested in fun finding flowers.
