The end.

In the beginning... Let's be real here. Do we really truly know where the beginning is? When was it? And what about the end? We have all of these guesses about the end. Religions have created stories to tell the end. Science has its version of the end of our nearest star in the sky. It will expand before it shrinks and everything that exists on the earth will be consumed in the fireball. Will humans still exist? Hopefully they get off this space rock by then. Scientists also have different versions of how the planet could cease to be a place that harbors advanced life, and they have hypotheses about how long cockroaches will stick around after we're gone. They know how the world as we know it will end but will it really be over? Whatever it becomes, it's still going to be a part of the story. And where in time did it begin and was there something before that? And if there was something prior then wasn't it the beginning? One thing that I do know is that it didn't begin with me. I suppose it could have, but the lives of others who have lived before me, before us, they tell us otherwise. As for the end of life? Well just because people pass away, doesn't mean they never existed. And if they did exist, then they will always be a part of the story. They were in it and so they still are in it. They leave their mark. Think first of some of the historical figures from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. From Genghis Khan to Socrates and from Joan of arc to Beethoven.

Even the most insignificant life is impactful to the ones around it. A woman has a child and it's a still birth, or she has a child and it dies of sudden death syndrome after a few months of living and breathing and eating and pooping. Even a miscarriage or an abortion will cause grief and pain that can be difficult. The families mourn. The doctors feel each loss. The midwives built relationships with the families and they too feel the losses. Those short lives, made ripples. And the ripples continue out with no end and no shore to stop them. There is no end for them that I can foresee, there's just a continuence. Those lives didn't end. Your life doesn't end. My life too, doesn't end. The people I have met along the way and the thoughts they have and the memories they have are all a continuence of me. My friends, my ex wife, my childhood friends, the people I randomly meet at a hot spring in idaho. They take something from our encounter. Even if they just had to alter their course to get around my belongings, or even my body, their life was changed. Then, to add another layer, try to see everything as though it is happening now. Because all of it is. All of it. Everything is in every moment if you stop to look deeply enough at it. The ever changing river or the ever changing mountain is always there. Even before it was a river the makings of a river were there. And after the stream dries up, it's part of the story of what was and what comes next. If the mountains crumble and fall, they will have been a part of the story of the things that come next. Let's say the rubble falls as a rock slide and dams the river creating a lake. The lake becomes a habitat for fish, they grow big and strong and the birds of prey swoop through the sky, and perch on the trees eating their catch. They make a mess and some fish pieces fall to the ground. Something else eats the scraps. The food becomes poop and the poop feeds the plants and something eats the plants. This can go on forever. Oh, right... it does! Back to the mountain... When did it form? Was it a volcanic intrusion? A tectonic collision? Before either there were layers of sediment and organic matter that accumulated slowly over the centuries, one year at a time. Then the crust of the earth quaked and the plates shifted. If it was a volcano the magma formed deep below the surface of the earth and then after it flows and cools new land is created. Then when we drive along the striated layers of rock on the side of the mountain we can see that some layers are 400 million years old and then another layer is only 280 million years old. The mountain wouldn't be what it is without each layer. Each of those layers formed eons ago and sometimes they formed under and ocean and then fossils from sea creatures are found 5000 feet above sea level. Now let's take a closer look at the river that runs down the side of the mountain into the valley that eventually twists and turns it's way to the ocean. Where did the water come from? Was it once a giant glacier slowly carving a deep U shaped valley? How much sediment does it carry each year from the mountainside while carving itself deeper and deeper into the landscape. Is it not as much the mountain as it is the rain that falls and the snow that fell several years ago? And isn't the rain as much the clouds above as it is the oceans that evaporated and later cooled and condensed? Where does the river actually begin? Is it in that mountaintop glacial lake? Or isn't the beginning actually the same ocean that it ends in? What would it be if it hadnt been evaporated by the heat from the sun? Maybe the river actually starts in the sun. Where did the molecules of Hydrogen and Oxygen come from? Was the beginning of the river actually the first water molecule? Somewhere in space the star dust... No. Wait... before the star could become dust it had to be a star and before it was a star it was gas and dust... But, how did the first hydrogen atom come to be? As you can see the beginning isn't easily defined. In the beginning of this life each of us was born. But are we not made of genetic material passed down to us from our parents and from their parents before them? If any of your ancestors hadn't lived until they procreated what would have come of your family tree? Which cell in your body was the first one to form? Is it not already dead long ago? How is it that you have been made small and have grown into a larger being? Didn't each and every cell that created your life die several times over by now? So when do we actually die if ever? Don't our cells and our flesh become something else? Just as the river becomes rain and the rain becomes the river. Will we not also become what we were before? And what exactly was it that we were? If our bodies are burnt into ash and burried into the ground, if a tree grows in that spot are we not the tree? When the eagle eats the fish is it not made up of the fish that it just ate? Is the birth of the fish any less important than the birth of the eagle? What would the eagle be had it not consumed all that it has? Seeing the eagle as the bird it presents as in the present moment is one way to see it. Can you not see the bugs that the fish ate or the blood that the mosquitoes needed to sustain life before they were swallowed by the dragon fly that was swallowed by the fish that lept from the water before it was snatched in the eagles talons? When we see the oak tree in the acorn we begin to understand that the acorn is more than just the genetic material of the tree that dropped it. Understand that it is also the sunlight and the rain and the organic material it grows in. If the sunlight didn't reach the place to warm the soil and the rain didn't fall and the soil wasn't fertile enough the tree wouldn't exist. And how about that family of squirrels nesting in the branches? Are they not a part of the trees story? Are they not part of the tree? Had the squirrel not buried the acorn, maybe the tree wouldn't have ever found the other requirements for it to live? A continuence is all there can ever be. It's always and forever and it's also now. Stay present and live in it. (Sorry about the odd photo dump, this blogger app is not that great. It gives me problems and I am learning to deal with it.)