Splish Splash

Looking through old files and found this. Damn I was smart back then - I wonder what happened..

----------------------------------

Earth. The blue planet. Third rock from the sun. Our home. A speck of dust in an unfathomable universe. And yet, to us, the Earth is an area far too vast and intricate to ever fully comprehend. And beyond that still, the borders of our lands and towns and villages. People live out their entire lives, rarely straying from their familiar territory. Many seem afraid of what may lie out there. Out beyond the Starbucks and McDonald's, the pubs and clubs, the corner off licenses and greasy fish and chip shops, past the parks and playing fields, the hedges and the streams, beyond the hills, valleys, and lakes, mountains, deserts, forests, oceans. Past the limits of our small and humble homeworld and into the infinity of the unknown.

The sheer size, scale and grandeur of the universe is awe-inspiring, the rugged and untamed beauty of our planet is breathtaking, the ingenuity and splendour of nature itself incomprehensibly spectacular. And yet, how many people stop and look and listen? And realise the beauty of existence? The preferibility of presence as opposed to absence? The magic of light, dark, empty, full, good and bad?

Life, examined closely, is a fine-tuned ballet of super complex mathematical precision and programming. It can be explained quite simply. You would, probably, associate biology with life. Right? A living being can be described as a biological entity of some kind, be it animal, plant or microbe. But what is biology? Merely a fine balance of chemicals, reacting in a manner which metabolises and generates electrical energy in such an intricate fashion that it forms self-aware, self-replicating units of life. And if we examine that chemistry under the microscope, we see that each atom is comprised of energy, manifested in condensed form. Chemistry is, to all intents, a means of describing the physical behaviour of matter. Chemistry is a level above physics. And physics, of course, is maths. Quantities changing, shifting and altering according to algorithms. Life is bound by mathematical precision. Matter behaves according to fundamental universal principles in the real world, much as it does in that of a computer game. But what is outside our box? How did the laws that we take for granted come to pass?

As human beings, we are all wrapped up in our own tailor-made universes. Too busy to sit and contemplate the obsurdity of the cosmos, to indulge in unadulterated thought and speculation. I wonder why we're here. All cogs spinning in a universal machine. But to any higher purpose? Surely this race of bizarre creatures serves no useful function? Are we here just for the hell of it?

I wonder if I'll ever get the answers I seek to my questions. But I say this now. I am very much afraid of death. And am dreading the day that I draw my last breath. Consciousness is the single most fascinating thing I know and I cannot comprehend the lack of comprehension that the lack of life and consciousness would bring.

But my end looms, many many horizons away. I try not to think about the end but it often returns to plague my thoughts. Death is inevitable. My memories and awareness seemed to fade in as I aged from birth to my present age of 18. Will my thoughts fade out similarly until I'm completely mentally deconstructed? Or is there a robust fundamental element comprising my being which exists in an untangible format long after the death and decomposition of my body?

I will probably never know... And so I believe I should live out each day of my life, doing my best to absorb all I can from this world before the timer runs out. To experience as much of life as possible before it's too late. To take more risks and have more fun, to live life in happiness, laughing and smiling, singing and dancing, running and jumping. A brilliant bouncing ball of appreciation, love, compassion and happiness.