Dear Life,
I love you.
It’s been 61 years since we met. Damn, that sounds like a lot of years. It sure doesn’t feel that way.
To be honest, I don’t remember the exact moment we met. I only know it was love at first sight. Sure, we’ve had our issues. My passion for you has never waned.
A lot of people have asked me to explain what I see in you. I can’t. I open my mouth… it’s like opening a briefcase filled with birds.
Still, I reckon I should have an answer. So I’ve asked smarter people what they see in you. A few say you’re something to endure. Although they don’t say why… or to what end. Most resort to analogies. A few quote poems. Analogies and poetry are attempts at explaining things we don’t understand. Also, few of the people who quote those pretty and inspiring words live like they believe them.
Strip the analogies away, we’re left with definitions: life is the state of being alive. What’s alive? There is no definition of “alive” that differentiates my experience of you from a virus’s. I don’t like that.
I met a famous Neurosurgeon who took the ball even farther. She said life is a lump of protoplasm with the ability to reproduce. I asked if mules are alive. Most can’t reproduce, you know. The famous neurosurgeon yawned, and checked her watch. I still don’t know if mules count as a living thing. I guess every rule has a loophole.
Focus on the body, it’s hard to say I exist at all. I no longer possess a single atom I was born with. That process has repeated itself multiple times in my life.
Beyond the body is consciousness. A deep, twisty, and wildly disorienting rabbit hole that ultimately disgorges all who enter without answers. If consciousness is awareness, we have to include plants and trees. They follow the sun. Know their offspring. Even share resources with them. If nothing else, these are forms of awareness.
I recently overheard a conversation between a vegan and a carnivore. The vegan: “the way we treat animals is appalling.” The carnivore: “we do worse to plants.”
All we know for sure… at least we should know this for sure… is assigning ourselves as the ultimate arbiters of consciousness is unlikely to end well for most of what isn’t human… and probably some of what is.
Somewhere down the road… maybe here, we’ll get to the soul. Some believe it doesn’t exist. Others believe it does. Another dead end.
Trying to pin you down is like trying to catch running water in a bucket. Whatever I grab contains none of the qualities I seek. I say that and see my problem. I’m too focused on what I want to see.
I broaden my filter. It’s obvious… if death is defined by what it lacks, life must therefore be about all it is. ALL… not only the stuff I like.
Not just beauty… ugliness too; the pleasure of touch and the pain of skin tearing; laughter, especially those deep belly laughs and crying so hard that it feels like your heart is turning inside out; Queen, live at Wembley Stadium and drunken karaoke at 3am; the first smile of a child and the last breath of a loved one; your dog licking your toes when they come out from under the covers and roadkill; the warmth of the sun on your shoulders and skin cancer; trust and betrayal; victory in battle and the bloated corpses of your colleagues on the battlefield; the sound of rain and floods; feasts and starvation; the courage of truth and the cowardice of lies; the majesty of nature and the indignity of landfill… all of this, every beautiful and hideous thing you can think of… inextricably entangled… that’s what you are.
Yes to life is yes to it all. Rejecting any of it is rejecting you. It’s so self-centered… childish, really, to think that you should be what I want you to be.
A “full life” is whatever I get. You don’t owe me anything. In fact, it now dawns on me that it’s always been the other way around. You conjured me from the void… whispered in my ear… welcome to your life, show me what you can do with it.
I won’t let you down. I won’t play it safe. What would be the point? I’ll give you everything I’ve got… all the way to the end. When that end comes… however it comes, I will, with all the anticipation and eagerness inherent at the beginning of any great adventure, step forward and say yes.
Thank you… for what’s happened, what’s happening, and for the beauty and brutality yet to come.
I love you.