The crucible from which we all emerge -

E = mc² or what is it that makes us, us?

Credit: author - how I feel at the moment.

Apologies to those of you who’ve been reading my posts. I took an unintended break, now back. And I thank you for being here, as I peel back the layers that separate me from what I most need to understand.

There are those I’ve been following here who’ve lately gone to ground, silent. I wait for them to reappear, pushing their heads up out of the leaves, and once again letting the words spill from their minds like the jewels they are.

There are others who’ve been almost manic, posting continuously. Possibly to hold at bay the angst-y feeling that seems to pervade the globe at the moment? Difficult to say, but it has that air.

I have been very silent. Quite still. I’m attempting to put a name to this feeling, which is an unusual state, but so far I haven’t come up with anything. This zone of quiet is occupied by only a few things - thoughts of my husband Doug, who died around this time last year. Thoughts of who I am and will become. Thoughts of those still here who I love and hold close.

Death brings stillness in more ways than one. There’s a profundity and a finiteness to it that is wholly different from anything else I’ve ever faced. It carries great loss and depth. But it also contains - and I missed it for nearly a year because I was so consumed by grief - something of endless worth.

It was a tiny breath of a thought, barely there. It waited patiently for me to notice it, and once I did, it unfolded before me. That something so small can expand to encompass my entire being, everything I know and feel, is extraordinary to me. I struggle to find the words to convey the enormity and simplicity of its message.

Life itself is a precious state. It’s not a permanent state, in the form we accept as being life. But to me, having thought about this over many dark days in this past year, life has many forms. We know, and experience one form, and when that is done, we mourn. Are we mourning for others or ourselves? For me it has been both.

Religion was developed by man to explain things he cannot. It is taught to us. And how can it be that only one is right and all the others are wrong? No one has proof, only our spindly stories we thread through each others’ brains.

There is something more than this, though. Spirituality just is, it emanates from us, if we allow it. We don’t need to be taught to know it.

Writers, poets, musicians, dancers, artists of all stripes touch the edges of that something while still in this form we call living. Touching it can hurt - it feels otherworldly, vast and uncontrollable. Art is real life given endless numbers of physical forms. It’s a pale representation of what lies beyond, yet we keep trying, over and over again, to paint its face in one form or another.

Why would we keeping doing that if it weren’t THE fundamental question? Why do we need this so badly?

Death walked in my door a year ago, sat down in front of me, and hasn’t gotten up since. I’ve asked it kindly to leave, but it has other plans. It wants me to understand its purpose. It tells me many things which I cannot even begin to describe well.

Image by Enlightening Images from Pixabay

If life is a crucible, filled to overflowing with material on its way to becoming something else, then a phenomenal amount of energy is needed to get it to that state. Birth, like death, meets a moment when critical mass and speed reach their zenith, and something, we, emerge. We’re either walking through the door into this life, or out of it.

But that describes bounty vs. emptiness, and I’m not sure that walking out that door spells the end.

Energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed - they’re different states of the same thing. Matter is the lowest form of energy. What if life, in all its permutations, is simply us moving between levels, down into matter (ground state), to inhabit this rock for awhile, then up the ladder till we no longer have mass, but possess a shit-ton of energy (phase transition and beyond?). Apologies for co-opting established physics principles while talking about what are quite unprovable thoughts. But I cannot divorce the idea that we, our souls, are part of that equation. Why wouldn’t we be? I don’t think our ability to reason and to ask the most difficult questions about existence is simply a byproduct of being alive.

Death can pull back the veil of the daily meaningless distractions that we all encounter, revealing a deeper truth in all its rawness. Beauty, time, timelessness, truth, pain, awakening. We are tempered in this crucible, each time mixing different elements into new amalgams, emerging to ask these questions again and again.

My world is quiet. The birds are quiet. Even the dogs are quiet. I shrink from this vacuum, wishing for anything to intrude and break my reverie. But I know that this is where I’ll get answers, so I stay.