Putting things into perspective this Monday. I am always amazed that there is life that existed before I was alive, and that life will continue on long after I’m gone.
☀️
Sharing my doodle. This appears in my head whenever I’m reminded of this:
☀️
“It will happen to all of us that at some point you’ll be tapped on the shoulder and told- not just that the party is over- but slightly worse: the party’s going on, but you have to leave.”
⌛
UPDATE
☀️ It Already Happened Once ☀️
July 10 of last year I drew this doodle of a black line with a sun at the center.
It was a personal way of reminding myself of the short time we get to be alive.
I always wanted to get this as a tattoo, but I felt something was missing.
About three days ago I saw a comment on a book “Staring at the Sun” by Irvin D. Yalom that goes like “Death and existence stop being scary when you realize you didn’t exist for at least 14 billion years, now you do, one day you won’t, and 10^100 years in the future you might again since it already happened once.”
The last line of that comment extended my understanding.
The doodle needs to be revised.
I recall watching those quantum mechanics lectures on MIT OpenCourseWare and struggling to grasp how atomic particles could appear out of nowhere, disappear, then re-appear again randomly while retaining their nature (quantum fluctuations). Now it seems clearer to me that their initial appearance is being used as a precedent for their potential re-emergence given the understanding that matter share properties of both particles and waves.
Perhaps if we zoom out far enough, to the point where humans are the size of atoms, it’s easier to see how we might also share in this particle-wave duality of life.
Maybe our departed loved ones are simply riding the waves of non-existence until they reach the shores of their next life.
Maybe, in this vast and mysterious universe, life is indeed on our side.
Maybe the correct doodle looks something like this:
—🌙—-☀️—-🌙—
Maybe I’ll get that tattoo soon.
https://www.neithan.rocks/sandwiched/
https://www.neithan.rocks/sandwiched/
https://www.neithan.rocks/sandwiched/