There are times when certain aspects of life come into more focus. A war. A health scare. A death. In the past month, there has been a lot of people passing who were close to people who are close to me. I can count 6 people as I sit here writing this in these past few weeks who have died, between the age of one and eighty seven. Each one has a different story. Each story unknown until its end. This article will not be about death, it will be about what comes before it.
“What happens when we die?” a friend said to me over a long telephone call one evening last week. The lamp in my living room spilled its yellow-white beams up, and the light found its way all around the room. I was laying on the sofa, my cell phone next to me. A thin white cable connected the bottom of the phone to my ears. The phone screen was black apart from the round photo of my friend’s face and her name below it. Next to the sofa was my walnut coffee table. Papers and bills stacked in the far corner under a glass snow globe, a highball glass half-full with water on my nearest corner. A single leather placemat skewwhiff in the middle of the table. One orange tic-tac on the edge of the placemat.
“I don’t know” I said. “I am more interested these days about what happens when we live.”
We both went quiet. I got reflective, as did she. We mused about life for a while before I said it was time for me to go to bed. As she was 8 time zones behind me, she had half her day ahead of her. We ended the call and I went upstairs. As I brushed my teeth, my mind meandered into the question of what life is all about.
I know I don’t have the answer to the question of the meaning of life. Not for anyone else. But I have realised what it means to me.
The meaning of life is to live.
While I know I’ve written about this before in previous blogs, time has brought a deeper and deeper appreciation.
I don’t know how long I will live for and I don’t know what will happen to my health or my other life circumstances before I go. As I write this, I’m amazed to know that not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for the experience of being alive. It might be a small moment that touches my heart. Last week one of those happened when I saw a wren in the small bird bath screwed up high on my garden fence. I’d not seen a wren even perch on it before. And there it was, sitting in the water, splashing, cleaning, preening, then splashing some more before it flew off. Seeing that brought me out of my worried mind, into the ‘now’. It took one second to bring me back into wonder and gratitude. A moment.
Between my first breath and my last, what counts?
The sum of moments?
I spied on insects for hours on end as a kid. Watching ants, woodlice, earwigs and anything else I could find in the garden of number 31 Lime Grove. Even back then I wondered about their lives, and the point of it. I thought there must be more to it than to be a part of the food chain, more than to exist to eat something smaller and be eaten by something bigger. More to my own than of growing up, doing well in school, having a job, a house, a family before growing old, and taking my last breath.
There had to be more to it all. And I was the one, out of all living things to figure out what it was, then proclaim it to everyone else on earth, Funny how things like that can seem to be our ‘job’. And ironic now, years later, that I write about that exact thing.
I never had the answers for everyone else then, and I don’t have them for anyone other than for me now.
The more I satisfy my nerdy curiosity in the latest scientific research into the very large (astrophysics) and the very small (quantum mechanics), I find it miraculous that anything exists. I can’t grasp even half of what the scientists say, but dumbed down just enough for me to get it, I know they don’t get it either. Science has found more questions to every answer that their brilliant minds have discovered.
So, to me, it’s all about the moments. Moments of aliveness. Being able to see things, because of the existence of light and having working eyes and a brain to witness them. Being able to hear things, because I have working ears and a brain to make sense of vibrations in the air. Being able to taste and smell things because I have working receptors in my nose and mouth and a brain to make sense of those too. Having nerve endings in my skin and nerves throughout my body to sense the physical world. And a mind able to create and feel emotions. Emotions to things that aren’t even happening. Salivating over the thought of what I might have when I go out for dinner tonight. Hearing an earworm of a song that isn’t playing, that I heard yesterday. Seeing the faces of loved ones in my mind and they’re not here. Laughing at a joke I heard 5 days ago. Worrying about things that have never happened. Making up all kinds of different emotions about the numbers in my bank account that I see on the screen on my phone. Waking up and smelling tomorrow’s coffee.
Energy being able to experience itself. In this precise form called Wyn Morgan for a short period of time.
I could go on and on about it.
The same friend I mentioned at the beginning of this article asked me on a text message about my definition of luck.
My answer: ‘To have been born healthy.’
I forget how lucky I am to be able to experience all this life has to give me. While I’m here, I’m glad for those moments I remember it, and all the other moments I’m immersed in the miraculous experience itself.
With love and thanks,
Wyn