Personal Cosmology

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The death of my mother-in-law and a dear childhood friend got me thinking about death - as it might for anyone.  The specter is never far away from my thoughts anyway, as each year speeds by and the cliff comes into view.  

It naturally raises all sorts of religious or spiritual reflections and propositions.  Yet, for me, and it seems for many, a better understanding of science and our place in the universe make most of those seem whimsical and inadequate.  Reference this.

As it does for everyone, it's forced me to look and understand death and reconcile it with life.  It's terrifying, of course.  Increasingly, like a lurking presence hanging over my shoulder that challenges how I spend my days.  Perhaps because it is so frightening, there is this quirky belief in the back of our heads that after death we'll somehow still be 'around', to watch things going on from 'above' or another dimension.   It gives us some subconscious comfort.  Yet, I've come to believe it's a vain denial or delusion.  We don't really understand  'non-existence.'  Our lives seem continuous, so why wouldn't we just go on to the next dimension, whether that's a 'heaven,' reincarnation or some out-of-body consciousness.  And religious mythology reinforces that illusion and can be a residual ghost or wistful fabrication for even the atheist. 

But it is an illusion.  There is no evidence, nor does common sense suggest, there is anything after life any more than there was before life.   Before birth we don't exist - we're biologically created -  we go through an average 4000 weeks - and then we don't exist again.  There is no evidence that we are any different than the animals or plants that briefly inhabit this little rock floating in an unknowably vast universe in a flicker of time before we simply disappear.   

The comfort, I suppose, is that you don't know you're dead.  Just like you didn't know you weren't alive before you were born.  It's a curse of consciousness and self-awareness.  And an ego that blinds us to an objective reality; an inability to see the larger context in which we exist.  As a species and individually we think we're special.  We're each personally self-absorbed, to varying degrees, seeing and experiencing reality from inside our bubble, consumed with our appetites, ambitions, routines and dramas, all the while taking time and place for granted.  Our religious traditions would have us believe we're individually and collectively the center of the universe, both physically and morally. (which has caused problems for millennia….but that's for another column).  Yet the science of only the last hundred years has revealed our arbitrary, incidental, temporary and miniscule existence in the universe.

That recognition has led me to a kind of personal cosmology that steps back and reevaluates the world and our personal reality in relation to the scales of space and time.   We are on a tiny rock orbiting a star that's been shaping our world for billions of years; floating in an unfathomably vast universe.  Sometimes, I'll look up at the blue sky, trying to comprehend what's beyond it; that our reality is a PLANET…just a fragile little terrarium floating in that cosmic infinity, with only a sheer coating of atmosphere to protect us.   It has endured chapters of geologic change with living things coming, evolving, and going for millions of years. Our part is riding on the knife's edge of the "present" that is only a smidgin of a moment in time; yet has included scores of civilizations and billions of lives passing through it.  Ultimately, our kind will disappear - as have others - either by self-destruction, geologic calamity or a cosmic catastrophe, along with all its history, creations and struggles. 

And amidst all that space and time, with that history and place, we get dropped into it.  How lucky is that?

The truth is, based on the odds, (Neil deGrass Tyson video) we are incredibly lucky to be here.  Rather than taking for granted our brief life here and resentful of death, we should flip the script and look at it less personally and more objectively, recognizing how damn lucky we are.  To inhabit a body, with a consciousness, vivid senses, agency, relationships; all while experiencing this planet in a reality that's bathed in the warmth of our star in a sliver of time - at least for our time - in relative comfort.

Advancing age naturally forces us to slow down, reflect and take stock of our lives.  In reconciling with our death we ask the what, when and where of our brief flicker of existence.  We start to recognize and savor the taste of our last experiences.  Perhaps viewed less egotistically, maybe a little coldly, through a cosmic lens might give us additional reason for gratitude.

**This is a corollary of religious perspectives.