Today Is The Greatest Day I've Ever Known

Death and dying is a touchy subject for us hoomans.

Doesn't matter if you're 'saved' and will spend eternity with your Lord and Savior, or you don't have a clue about why in the hell we live just to die. The specter of your life ending, no matter what you say or do, is disturbing and unsettling and scary.

That's because unlike literally every other life form on this planet, we're acutely self-aware of our conscious existence and can comprehend that life and living will eventually end and leave us in a state of rigor, desiccation and decomposition.

That's a lovely mental image, innit?

How we spend our final days is a subject of trial and tribulation, especially when we factor in the serendipity of how we live and how quickly and easily life can be taken from us against our will.

People die all around us, every minute of every hour of every day, in every conceivable way.

Old age.... disease... accidents... suicide... addiction... crime... war... pestilence... ignorance... all of these and many more make up Death's Hit Parade.

And of course, our preference is to choose the method by which we'll end up taking the Dirt Nap if we get the chance to do so. Here's mine:

Once I know I'm toast, I will take in hand a previously-acquired heavy dose of deadly narcotic and drive (or be driven) as far up into the mountains as possible. I'll then ingest the heavy narcotic and begin walking into the forest until I lose consciousness and fall over and die. The local animals will rip and tear me to shreds and eat me all up, then they'll shit me out and I'll become compost for the living forest. Maybe they'll be lucky and get a good high from eating my narcotic-infused organs.

Organically Recycled Hooman... not Soylent Green!



BTW, if you've never seen 'Soylent Green', I suggest you do so. Great social dystopian commentary, and it was Edward G. Robinson's last film.

Here's something to ponder: you know those flocks of birds that are everywhere, all around us, every day? Ever wonder why, with so many thousands of birds all around us, every day... why don't we ever see dead birds lying around everywhere too? They have a short life, maybe a couple of years max, so you'd think our streets and lawns and parks would be littered with crow and sparrow and pigeon carcasses.

But no.

We can never know how aware those birds are of their brief lives, but the conventional wisdom is that when birds feel unwell or sick, they find a secluded place to either recover or die. Their small bodies are then eaten up or simply desiccate and decompose where they fell, becoming organic compost.

Sound familiar?

It may be nothing more than ancient instinctual behavior, but it seems to work pretty well for us hoomans with our streets and lawns and parks that aren't covered in bird carcasses.

Same goes for squirrels and possums and lizards and raccoons and coyotes and all the other 'wild' animals that share our suburban habitat. They may not be cognizant of their place in the grand scheme of things, but they know when the time has come to separate themselves from their group and let nature rule.

It's far more complicated for hoomans. For one thing, our bodies are much larger and take longer to naturally desiccate and decompose. And then there's the smell. And the idea of hoomans seeing other hoomans lying there, dead and decomposing, eyes and mouth wide open, belly distended, taunting their mortality.

That's why 'modern' man buries the dead, to hide the stench and remove the carcass from sight or from being et. All the other ceremonial brouhaha over burials is made-up dogmatic baloney to salve our self-awareness of Death's Hit Parade. 



Ancient man used the same instincts as animals when it came time to croak, walking away from the group to expire alone, unseen and un-smelled and ready to be ripped and torn to shreds and eaten up by the local animals, who then shit out the hooman organic compost.

I... I'm sensing a theme here.

The subject of Final Days came to me while watching the coverage of the untimely death of basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and several friends and associates. Losing their lives in a helicopter crash was an awful way to go since it's highly likely there were several terror-filled minutes experienced by all aboard before plowing into that Calabasas hillside.

On the other hand, Kobe routinely chopper-commuted from his Newport Beach home to points all over the Southern California for (by his own estimation) over 17 years, putting himself at risk every time he strapped in. Yes... driving the freeways is also dangerous and can lead to a fiery death, but it beats falling out of the sky in a malfunctioning or errant aircraft, watching the impending impact with big eyes and a clenched heart.

This is why we'll never have flying cars as personal transport. Crashing while at ground level dramatically increases the chances for survival.

Here's the thing: much has been made of the fact Kobe and Gianna spent their last morning alive together in church, which brings a sense of comfort to those mourning their loss. Father and daughter spent that morning praying to their deity of choice, not anticipating their impending demise.

It got me thinking about the final day I spent with certain loved ones that I've lost over the last 20 years or so.

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My Grandfather Manuel roamed the earth for 94 years until getting hit by a car on one of his daily walks. He survived but was confined to a wheelchair and decided he'd lived long enough and didn't want to be a burden, so he just stopped eating. After a week or so he slipped into unconsciousness, so our family gathered around him on that final night to cry and share memories and be together. We all crammed into his room as he took his last breaths, watching him leave, wanting him to stay but knowing he could not. Although his life's force left his body in front of our eyes, I could swear it entered all of us and we were energized with his love and the force of his nature.

My wife's Grandmother Lila was another force of nature, irascible and thorny and perfectly wonderful because she really liked me and I her. Well into her 80's, she suffered a series of strokes that left her in a nursing home bed, unable to walk or speak. The last time we saw her alive, it was during the holidays so we took her a small green dinosaur plush doll wearing a Santa Cap. She grabbed that thing and held it tight next to her chest, eyes beaming and glistening and showing a giant smile. She knew we loved her a lot. She passed only days later, and we took home one of the gift plants from her memorial that thrives in our living room, huge and green, and we call it Grandma.  I also have the dino doll too!

At only 64 years old, my Mom spent her final day unconscious in a nursing home, having stroked out the night before, the latest in a series of strokes that resulted from a lifetime abusing alcohol and cigarettes. My Aunt Yolanda (Mom's best friend since grade school), my wife and I spent several hours at Mom's bedside that day, reminiscing and laughing and crying and holding her hands and talking to her and feeling lots of love for each other. Mom passed at 11 that night, and I recall the searing reality of loading her wheelchair and few remaining belongings into my truck the next morning, knowing I'd never see her again.

At only 43 years old, my younger Brother Chuck's lifetime of alcohol abuse meant his health was shot... liver failure, infected bloodstream, gangrene... he was a mess. When I got the call he'd been admitted into the hospital again, I raced up to Northern California to see if I could help. There he was in the hospital bed, skin and eyes yellowed with jaundice, ranting that he'd be fine once he got a new liver. He rejected the idea he'd need to stop drinking for at least 6 months before he'd get on a donor list, calling me stupid for saying that even though we both knew it was true. We'd re-established our brotherly bond only a few years before, but this final visit was filled with acrimony and anger, accusation and denial. I left knowing he'd be gone soon... and sure enough, he was.

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I read a sci-fi story once about a doctor who'd secretly invented a machine that could predict exactly how long a person would live. The machine would take blood samples and the results looked like a long pink tube that could be measured in days. He became famous and then infamous, which forced him to go into hiding because the insurance industry had a bounty on his head since his invention would put them out of business. He held them off long enough to get run over by a bus, because he already knew when his time would come and he wanted to keep the machine out of the hands of those who would exploit it.

We don't know how long our conscious existence will last... the length of our pink tube.

We don't know if there's an afterlife or if reincarnation is a thing or if believers will spend eternity with their savior of choice. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying because they don't really know either.

We know there are many easy ways to extend our own lives by eating better, sleeping better, taking care of our health... stuff like that. However, we don't do those things and so we die much sooner than we need to, even though we know how not to die sooner. Stoopid hoomans.



I like to say that each day above-ground is a great day, a precious gift, a thing of value not to be squandered. It can be a challenge trying to remember that because life can be distracting and mean and venal and heartbreaking. 

The secret is to think about that last day of conscious existence, that final day of breathing and seeing and loving. 

Chances are, we won't know when that day arrives because death can sneak up behind us and snatch our conscious existence right out from under our feet.

So make sure that today and every waking moment is spent doing something that gives you purpose and meaning, no matter how grand or trivial it may seem. Take each day by the scruff of the neck and shake it... HARD.

I like to think that in the final seconds of his life, Kobe knew in his heart he'd done exactly that.

Be like Kobe. Live large, kick ass, take names.

"Razors pain you; 
Rivers are damp:
Acids stain you; 
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful; 
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live."
     -- 'Resume' by Dorothy Parker


Lead image, Gracias de Google Images; 'Soylent Green', 'Monty Python & The Holy Grail', 'Monty Python-The Meaning of Life - Death' and Smashing Pumpkins 'Today' videos, Muchismas Gracias de YouTube.

The Church of the Blessed Bullet

 

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them, and they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." – Barack Obama, Uppity Socialist Kenyan Usurper Not-The-Real-President (black man)

Ya, I know… another essay about guns, but this time I think perhaps I’ve learned something that so far has eluded me.

I think I finally get it.

The gun-fondling thing, that is.

Through all the media baloney, political posturing, pearl-clutching and hand-wringing. Through all the school and shopping mall and theater and home and gun show and vacation spot shootings and the bloody aftermath of each.  I finally get it.

I finally understand the bug-eyed screeching, the waving around of loaded weapons, the invocation of what it means to be a ‘true patriot’, the threats of secession and insurrection and watering the tree of liberty with Type O positive. The notion that ‘an armed society is a polite society’. The idea that if every law-abiding citizen was armed, no one would DARE try to rob or hurt or otherwise be mean to anyone else for fear of being blasted by other law-abiding citizens packing heat.

I get it now.

It’s not really about the Second Amendment to the Constitution, because anyone who actually reads those few words… ALL of them, not just the part they like… and then allows their grey matter to cogitate for a few scant moments will realize the pro-gun arguments now being flung at every wall are simply wrong, outdated remnants of an antiquated mindset from a bygone era.

It’s not about the right to bear arms, because when the Second Amendment was written, the modern firearm of choice was a flintlock musket, not a matte black dildo-with-bullets. Really, you want to own a whole bunch of guns as you imagine the Founding Fathers intended?  Fine… as long as they’re muskets.

It’s not about personal freedom, because if there’s one thing that will NEVER EVER happen, it’s that someone from the Black Helicopter Brigade will come knocking at your patriotic door to take away your guns and register you with the ‘Hates Government’ FecesBook page.

It’s not even about the inherent and implied violence that surround guns like a stinky brown fart, something that gun fans use as their unspoken-yet-always-evident threat to anyone who even hints at the notion that a household with guns is 40 times more likely to have someone living in the home shot with that very same gun.

Nope, it ain’t any of those things that propel the rabid supporters of unfettered and unregulated gun ownership.

It’s a RELIGION, this gun ownership/fetish/fondling thing. I’m serious here, so think about it… HARD.

Doesn’t matter if you are a Obama-hating libertarian or a solid church-going registered voter/citizen.  Doesn’t matter if you hoard guns to fend off The Takers who will inevitably come around when the Zombie Apocalypse finally starts, or if you just enjoy hunting or target shooting or the mechanical nature of firearms. How else can one explain the love and devotion and passion and sheer blissful ecstasy that is demonstrated by The Armed Ones when they are fondling their beloveds?

Religion is the reason, and I’m not taking about a sectarian religious belief writ in any book or scroll or sheaf, although that kind of religious belief more often than not allows followers to rationalize their use of guns to mow down infidels who do not agree with them, amirite? Nope, the religion I speak of surrounds the very notion that guns = power, guns = authority, guns = don’t tread on me, man, or you’ll be eating lead.  Governments believe it, so it’s no wonder there’s always a shooting war happening somewhere, with opposing sides blasting away with fire in their eyes and their deity-of-choice right there with them, weapon in hand, spewing out their power one bullet at a time, in rapid-fire succession.

“Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of…” well, you know the rest.  The Church of the Blessed Bullet. Holy, Holy, Hole-y. ALL MUST KNEEL AT THE ALTAR OF THE BLAZING MUZZLE! “Body of Glock… (amen)… Body of Glock… (amen)… Body of Glock… (amen).” 

Let’s take a look at this long-standing religious belief that centers around, and holds as most exalted, the Almighty Gun, PRAISE THE TRIGGER.

Think about it: even if you adhere to the basic tenets of the Bible or Qur’an or Talmud, you cannot possibly take every word, every phrase, every concept written in those ancient tomes as literal, actual facts and specific unerring guidelines to live by in our society unless you are a fundamentalist religious zealot, in which case please stop reading this now and forget you ever heard of me. 

EVERY religion now being practiced on this planet cherry-picks their teachings and follows those precepts they like, glosses over those they don’t and simply ignore the ones that harken to a much more brutal and hostile world than the one we live in today. Enlightened believers understand those religious tomes are allegorical, not literal… they are morality plays written for uneducated masses of the past to be lulled into acquiescence and servitude at the hands of the learned religious scholars who sought to control them. Don’t believe me?  Look it up.

It’s the same for The Church of the Blessed Bullet. Here, read this:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

As anyone who doesn’t get all their information from Fox News knows, the gun-fondlers currently pointing their death sticks in our direction never EVER refer to anything in the Second Amendment before the second comma.  They prefer to quote the abridged version that doesn’t speak to ‘a well-regulated militia’.  In fact, we are now learning the version above was actually a re-write of the original text so as to allow state-sponsored militias, also known as ‘slave patrols’ in the South, to continue their activities to track down escaped slaves and keep them on their respective plantations, without interference from the federal gummint. Don’t believe me?  Look it up.

Like the followers of sectarian religions do with their ancient teachings, the gun-fondlers cherry-pick the Second Amendment to mean only what they want it to mean and disregard the part they dinna like, PRESTO CHANGE-O! It’s what religions do and have always done to try and stay relevant. So it is with The Armed Ones, who love invoking the Founding Father’s (abridged) words about gun ownership for the masses without the tiresome chore of actually understanding the context of their words. That’s what blind faith does to people.

Another hallmark of hardcore religious belief is the ability to reject any facts or information that does not confirm those firmly held beliefs, no matter how solid or educated or confirmable those facts might be. “The Earth is 6,000 years old… God created man and Earth and the universe… evolution is bunk… ancient men rode dinosaurs… no other life exists beyond our planet… man has no impact on climate change… the Constitution is based on the Bible… a fertilized egg is a human being… the United States is a Christian Nation...”  You get the drift, right?

For The Church of the Blessed Bullet, the firmly-held beliefs around gun ownership are rooted in the same type of ideas devoid of facts, context or even historical precedent.  “The Founding Fathers would approve of unfettered and uncontrolled gun ownership… the Second Amendment helps the citizenry to prevent tyranny… the government should have no say about what kind of guns a citizen may own… more guns in more hands means a safer world for everyone… anyone who lawfully owns a gun is automatically a ‘good guy’ that we should not fear… guns don’t kill people, people kill people…” Blind faith as reality, armed and dangerous, with a hair trigger.

It doesn’t stop there. Whether they will admit it openly or only within their cloistered circle, followers of sectarian religions typically make the assertion they are somehow better than either non-believers or those who choose another non-approved path to redemption (whatever the hell that means). Their belief makes them special, a cut above, chosen, imbued with the glory and promise of life everlasting with their savior when they finally take the dirt nap, as long as they believe. The Armed Ones are blatant about how special they are, whipping out their death sticks and holding them close to their hearts, comforted with the knowledge that anyone who deigns to question the bullet’s superiority can be silenced from a distance, in rapid-fire succession. The Armed Ones believe they are the only true patriots, and they will point their sacred scimitars of freedom at your face in an instant if you beg to differ… PRAISE THE TRIGGER!

About the comment made by NRA spokesmodel Wayne LaPierre that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun… is a good guy with a gun.” Two words:  CHRISTOPHER DORNER. Trained by the military to be an assassin, hired by the L.A.P.D. and given access to as many assault weapons as he wanted, he was the quintessential ‘good guy’ until he snapped and became the vilified ‘bad guy’.  He was a law-abiding and well-armed citizen soldier until his addled brain convinced him that The Church of the Blessed Bullet would give him the justification he sought to right some wrongs and… well, after a week of terror and four dead bodies and many wounded and thousands of spent rounds and a couple of lobbed tear gas canisters... BBQ! Yep, he was good, then he was bad, then he was crispy.

Pity Chris The Assassin. His world was steeped in gun love, in gun worship.  Watch the videos of him in action and see a man totally and completely enamored with the strength, the power, the authority bestowed upon him merely because he chose to kneel at the Altar of the Blazing Muzzle. It was his deity, and he lived to use that power for what most would consider ‘good things’… until they weren’t good any more. He used his blind faith in guns to mete out his own warped sense of justice, making himself the arbiter of death and the one we all fear is probably standing right next to us in line for coffee, loaded weapon hidden from view, angst gnawing at his consciousness, a worn-out spring wound far too tight.

Chris Dorner was a good guy until he was a bad guy.  Sorry Pastor Wayne, your concept sucks donkey balls.

Religion has a unique tendency to alter the worldview of ardent followers, and it doesn’t really matter what philosophy makes up those belief systems. Arab against Jew, Christian against Muslim, Tutsi against Hutu… it all runs together, it all degenerates into the same anger and bloodshed, the same zealotry and insanity. The Armed Ones are the first to say that they hold all that cards, hold the power, hold the ability to mete out patriotic justice and death one bullet at a time, in rapid-fire succession, and they wave their loaded cards at everyone else.  They smile broadly, hearts and minds devoted to the trigger and the bullet, convinced their guns mean they will be in control, convinced their guns mean they are always gonna be right, convinced the rest of us will just blithely cede power to them because BULLETS.  Holy, Holy, Hole-y.

I don’t have any answers here, and I don’t pretend to know what will come of our current national dialog about guns and death and good guys and bad guys and armed janitors and 100-round drums and school shooting drills and blood-soaked liberty trees.  I don’t understand the gun fondlers, or why they worship the idea of holding the power of instant death in their hands. I don’t understand the wide-eyed fear of ‘the other’ that spurs so many people to buy as many guns as they can, as if the Zombie Apocalypse was on the news just last night, right after the Weather Goddess predicted acid rain for all eternity.

 

As a non-believing anti-theist, my only guess is that FEAR is the driving factor in the religious fervor surrounding the death sticks, and the Uppity Black Man seems to have hit the nail on the head in his remarks during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Fear is what gives religion its power... fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of not mattering, fear of weakness, fear of loneliness, fear of 'the other', fear of being inconsequential.

 

The Church of the Blessed Bullet is based upon a foundation of fear that, at least from my perspective, has no place in a modern, civil society.

 

I do not fear death or spiritual emptiness or being involved in a multi-car pile-up on the 405 freeway. I do worry that The Artist will someday realize she could find someone much better than me, but as long as I show her love and tenderness and support and keep making tacos and cleaning bathrooms, she will accept me for my shortcomings. I do not fear pain or old age or infirmity or being extraneous in the grand universal scheme.  I worry that an adherent to The Church of the Blessed Bullet will make the decision to take me out without my prior acknowledgement or approval, Holy Holy Hole-y.

Guns = death. Guns = sorrow. Guns = hatred. Guns = violence. Guns = humanity de-evolved.

 

I do not live in fear.  I am made from the stuff of stars, and when my spring can no longer be wound, I will freely give my life's force back to Mother Earth to use as she will.  There's nothing to fear about that, and I don't need guns to make me feel safe or better about myself, about my world or my place in it.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
 

Lead image, gracias de theird.org; Tom Lehrer 'National Brotherhood Week' and Jimi Hendrix 'Hey Joe' videos, muchismas gracias de You Tube; Fuck the NRA; muchismas gracias to Alan Eggleston for introducing me, a weirdo high-school Freshman, to Tom Lehrer in 1970.

The Meaning Of Life

“There are some kind of men who are so busy worrying about the next life, they’ve never learned to live in this one.”
–Harper Lee, writer

When I start to think about my life, my existence, my waking consciousness, I get a little weak in the knees. That’s because my view of how all this came to be and what it means is based upon science and knowledge and reality, not religious dogma or superstition or spiritual voodoo. Of course, there are many people who would simply shake their heads and feel sorry for me because I haven’t ‘found God’, their be-all end-all answer to the great questions about The Meaning Of Life.

That being said, I totally understand why so many humans have made the decision to accept their religious teaching of choice, I really do. Life can be so complex, so venal, so cruel… sometimes only the gentle poetry of religious belief will salve a wounded soul, shredded and bleeding from the slings and arrows of daily life. I’ve always understood that our ancestors knew so little of the world they lived in, it was natural for them to create a spiritual context in which they could place themselves at the center, with everything else revolving around them. It’s the curse of being human, using that self-awareness to torture ourselves with.

Let me explain.

I’ve often shared my firmly-held belief that, as modern science (YAY!) has quantified, we humans and our Terran roomies live and die on an astral dust speck in the vastness of the Universe. Heck, it’s not even a dust speck… our Earth is an atom of a molecule of a dust speck that floats among the hundreds of billions of other dust specks that reside in the celestial ‘hood. Our puny little solar system, a galactic sweet spot that allows us to survive and plunder each other, is so spectacularly tiny as to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Are there millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of other molecular dust specks like ours where ‘life’ of some sort also thrives? Of course there are, but we’ll never have the chance to find out since we’ll probably kill each other off before then.

When I think about the amazing fortune that I/you/we have living here, sitting pretty with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, I am gobsmacked to realize how incredibly lucky we are to survive at all. The odds are against us, what with gamma rays and radiation and meteor missles and all the astral nasties that are out there, waiting to bring us to a fiery end. But no… here we are, having sex and shooting each other and poisoning that very life-giving atmosphere, seemingly oblivious to the oblivion that awaits us just outside that skinny little band o’ goodness we breathe. When I think of my existence within that context, I feel giddy and powerful and infinitesimal and obscure and terribly, terribly small.

And yet… we survive, by some weird and wonderful stroke of luck. It is invigorating to ponder how it worked out in our favor, and doing so makes me feel more alive, more grateful, more human than any dogma or doctrine could possibly provide. It makes me laugh out loud when those of the religious persuasion try and place themselves and their deity in the center of that vastness, as if their religious belief can somehow overcome and negate the powerful physical universe. Humans have used that same hubris for thousands of years, and yet they still persist, ignoring science and knowledge and wisdom, all in an effort to confirm their certainty. I say more power to them… but it is a fruitless, pointless task that only we humans waste our energy on. It’s that self-awareness thing again.

Think about our atmosphere… the life-giving, radiation-reflecting, moisture-bearing oxygen ocean that we live in every day of our conscious being. Using that most-excellent scientific method, it has been determined that the thickness of our atmosphere in relation to the size of Earth is the same as the thickness of the skin that covers an apple. Yep… THAT thin. So little is really known about how and why this skinny band of life stays glued to Earth’s surface, it’s a bit humbling to realize how tenuous our lives are, bathed in that apple skin-thin oxygen ocean, breathing in, breathing out.

And that’s just the start of it. The oceans of coalesced water molecules that cover our planet are made up of the same ones that existed at the very beginning of Earth’s transition from a ball of molten rock to a beautiful garden of habitation. Same for the resulting breathable atmosphere, recycled millions of millions (billions?) of times through the gills and lungs and mitochondria of myriad species. All the water and all the oxygen we’ve ever had is what we still have, reused, recycled, restored into the stew of life on which we all thrive. We ain’t getting any more from the black vacuum, that’s for sure. All we have is all we have.



Think about that for a moment. We breathe the same air as the dinosaurs did so very long ago. We sup from the same pool of water that a Brontosaurus peed in while grazing on swamp grass, somewhere on Pangea, perhaps in a vast wetland that we now know as Kansas. This isn’t supposition or theory. We KNOW the dinos existed, we KNOW where they lived, we KNOW what they et. Only those humans who deny an ancient Earth could muster an argument against these facts, and yet… some humans do. I am more than amused at recent attempts of high-viz religious folk who want to twist scientific history to fit their faith.

And so it goes… the chemical merry-go-round that supports our lives on this planet, all with little or no help from us humans, with the notable exception of our insatiable desire to pollute and deforest and deface and deplete. Maybe, just maybe, if more people considered our incredibly finite natural resources and apple skin-thin atmosphere, they’d think differently. But no, we humans don’t like to go there, because it allows our self-awareness to consider our own mortality, and we dinna like that not one bit, NO SIR, NO MA’AM.

For me, it’s different… WAY different. See, I have come to grips with my life, my pending and unavoidable death, and my place in the whole grand Circus Maximus we call civilization. In my world, devoid of religious fables or dogmatic belief, we each have only one life to live, our conscious life. We are borne by other humans, created via the tried-and-true method of sexual procreation, and we live this conscious life until our bodies are no longer able to regenerate skin and bone and infection-fighting white blood cells. When I die, and I surely WILL die, my conscious life ends and… well, that’s the end of my conscious life. There is no ‘afterlife’ to speak of, there is no heavenly paradise awaiting me or anyone else. I be dead and gone, and nothing can or will change that fact. Others might disagree, but they simply cannot prove what their belief systems tell them, because they have ‘faith’ that tells them what to believe. How human, how self-possessed, how self-aggrandizing that is.

However, in my world, the incredible energy that pumped my heart and powered my brain and allowed the wondrous capability for me to actually live… that energy will not be wasted, oh no. That energy, just like all the water and all the air… that energy will be recycled into the amazing ephemeral grid that powers our atmosphere, allowing it to cling to this small Blue Earth with a tenacious grip. My life’s force will be absorbed and reused in some other way that matters not a whit to me, because I’ll be DEAD, because my conscious life will have ended. Mixing with the filtered radiation and sunlight and oxygen and water molecules, that invisible ocean in which we live… that’s where my energy will survive and thrive. I dinna care if it’s used to sustain a human or a tree or a rabid wolverine or (shudder!) a Republican or a patch of kelp floating off the Cali coast. I couldn’t care less how my life’s energy force will be utilized, but I know it will be, and it will not leave this Earth.

We are surrounded and infused by the energy, the life force, the primal motivation of every living thing that has ever lived and died on this Earth. The unseen ocean of atmosphere is chock-full of goody, filling our lungs and eyes and ears and hearts, a steamy and fragrant cocktail that we all sip on, every second of our conscious lives. And when we finally take the dirt nap, we unwillingly donate our energy essence to those we leave behind, those not yet born, to drink deeply from our collective pool of chemical funk. Yum!

Does any of this make you uncomfortable? Have you ever given even the smallest amount of time thinking about this type of spectral philosophy? Does your religion of choice prevent and/or discourage musing on alternate views of birth and death?

I reckon my philosophy could be construed as being based on reincarnation or Buddhist teachings, but I don’t see it that way. This Earth, this planet, this massive object hurtling through space… it is a living thing, and it feeds off of the teeming bacterium of life that covers the land, fills the oceans and spews crap into the atmosphere. We live, we die, we live, we die, we live, we die… and our Terra is the best recycler there is, at least in this tiny corner of the galaxy. It takes all we can give it, and when we have finally dessicated the surface and used up the resources and destroyed the ozone… when the surface of our world can no longer support ‘human’ life (and we haven’t blown it to bits with our self-aware bullshit), it will regenerate another type of life that can and will survive in the crappy environs we’ve left behind.

I rather enjoy the idea of that. Of course, it won't matter to me, because my energy… OUR energy... will power whatever life forms that survive and thrive in the hellscape we self-aware humans created.

Soooo… The Meaning Of Life. I could be trite and say it’s ‘to love one another’ or something insipid like that. Nope, ain’t gonna do it, I want to be honest here. For me, TMOL is simply to live every moment, every second, every day with verve and vigor and purpose and conviction, because no matter what you might think or believe, we only get one shot at a conscious existence. Anything that happens before or after this conscious life is of no consequence, because none of it… NONE OF IT… can be proven or established as fact. Doesn’t matter how grand or banal your life and times may be, the important thing is to derive all the maximum mental, emotional and philosophical joy you can.

Do you dread having to go grocery shopping? Not me… I love to walk the aisles, picking and choosing the items that will make me a happy wolverine come mealtime. Talking with strangers who need help figuring out how to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe. Shagging a cart that some miscreant left in the middle of a handicapped parking space. Checking out the Hot Wheels display, looking for that vintage Corvette Stingray to add to my collection. It is ALL GOOD.

Hate cleaning the bathroom? OMFG… you need to read my last essay titled ‘You’re Soaking In It’ to know how much enjoyment can be had with a sponge and some Comet.

Unhappy with how your life has turned out, even though you've tried to fix it? THEN CHANGE IT. Holy crap, our time is so short on this planet. Change your job, find a new mate, tell your kids to suck off someone else's money teat for a change, move somehwere else... just DO IT. Do what you need to do to make yourself happy, even if it hurts, even if it is hard, even if it costs you everything you own.

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning." -- from Mitch Albom’s ‘Tuesdays with Morrie'.

You get the picture.

Like the song says, “Love this life… don’t wait until the next one comes.” Breathe in deeply, walk in the rain, grab your honey’s butt just because you can, do a good deed daily. Make every second count, even the ones spent without reason or direction. Wake up in the morning and be glad a meteor didn’t take us all out overnight, that the atmosphere is still so clingy, that the coffee you make doesn’t taste like Stegosaurus pee (or does it?). Our waking and conscious lives are chock-full of amazing and wonderful things to eat/drink/taste/touch/feel/hear/smell… don’t waste a second of it being a typical self-aware humanoid. Be like the birds overhead, the descendants of those peeing dinosaurs, flying and spinning and chirping and jumping and living in the moment, living the life they live, without fear of the unknown. Because in the end, it is all unknown, all undeciphered, all uncontrollable. We are just Bozos on this celestial bus, squeaking each other’s noses as hard as we can.

"Life's journey is not to arrive safely at the grave in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy Shit... What a ride!" – Mavis Leyrer



TMOL lead image Gracias de sapientology.com; Quicksilver Messenger Service 'Fresh Air' and Crowded House 'Love This Life' videos, Muchismas Gracias de YouTube.