Momento Mori

While some Reach upwards to graze the surface of the heavens' mysteries with the minds of men, there are many who rightly peer downwards at their own reality.

Perhaps it is through living vicariously through the eyes of others that lies the greatest salvation of mortality. We are naught in all our searching to find that we might live anew, and our religions have indelibly etched constructs of eternal life that we cannot confirm or deny.

Biology might one day find that elixir of life, or something close to it, and perhaps nothing would ever change. While we might be able to greater explore ourselves, the world, our universe, we would too still wreak all of our infernal evils upon all these entities just the same.

Death is ultimately an individual experience, even in the face of some larger biological extinction. It seems to me that it represents our final lens through which we are forced to view but every ticking second of carnal life. And so we contain our reality within this sphere, our 2kg of gray matter perhaps imprisoned not so much by the hard limits of electrical conductivity and synaptic density, but rather by the very software limitations of the human imagination.

Might we find a way to expand upon etenity with an increasing realization that individual life might well be an illusory perception? Perhaps it's possible that like many hive entities we are meant to live more properly through each other?

Certainly to live the lives of 100 people is to live 100 times longer than you yourself might, in simultaneity? Perhaps living vicariously through others is a form of life extension all its own? It has of course been argued that we live fuller, 'richer' lives when we live in the integrated environment of other humans.

It might well be true that we "live that we might die," but my wonderment concerns how we might live to alter the final stages of our lives. Perhaps the entire biological imperative of reproduction is nature's gift of eternal life. Perhaps we have children, and maintain friendships, that we might live forever through our bonds with others.

I suppose that would be a perfect irony. How much is it possible to live through another? Can the human conciousness, if it even exists, entangle like so many qubits inextricably with others? If even a shard of this is true, I would argue that we die, that we might live a greater sum of existence.

Pointless musings of course. There are two world views in existence in my mind. I find them overly generalized, but accurate as well. There are those who look up, and see their world as a vista no reign of time could allow full experience. There are those who look down, and see their world as an encapsulated wonder that they might share in its wondrous fruits and tangible beauty.

As with everything, I think there are spectrums and we are naturally a dichotomous presence. Either way, maybe it's through other people that we find a sense of unity of these two great realms. Of a life with no bounds, and one with tangible constructs. Maybe it's through others that we see the other half to which we are deprived.

If that were the case... what a harmony of perfection might we claim on the mantle of nature?

Still I look up, the high road, if you will. The low road is sweeter in taste, and is a faster, perhaps more fulfilling path to take. Yet the world to me makes more sense when I look out of it, and not in on it.

Lest we all be ants, maybe if we could better communicate to each other, the both views that is, what we each saw when we peered into our own worlds... we might built a great tower that reached forever into the skies. We tried once and failed... maybe one day we'll try again...


Old Scots Song:

"By yon bonnie banks,
And by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,
Where me and my true love
Were ever want to gae,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

Oh! Ye'll take the high road and
I'll take the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love
Will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

'Twas then that we parted
In yon shady glen,
On the steep, steep side of Ben Lomond,
Where in purple hue
The Highland hills we view,
And the moon coming out in the gloaming.

Oh! ye'll take the high road and
I'll take the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love
Will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

The wee birdie sang
And the wild flowers spring,
And in sunshine the waters are sleeping,
But the broken heart it kens
Nae second Spring again,
Tho' the waeful may cease frae their greeting.

Oh! ye'll take the high road and
I'll take the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love
Will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond."