Sunday, March 9, 2008

Something From Nothing


I wrote this after Lucy was born. Another Boomvang 3 article.




To Re-CaP
You may recall from previous editions of Boomvang that I am not a big fan of death. I could do without it really. Decidedly not a fan. Well, while I am still not a fan, I am coming to some sort of an understanding with death. To re-cap from before, so we can all start on the same page, my issue with is death is, well really there are many, but one of the major issues is one day you’re here, eating tofu chili dogs, sitting on your dog-fur encrusted sofa, enjoying an episode of Sports Night, and then ka-bam! no more you. Here today gone tomorrow is not my favorite concept.

Trying to Get Along
So here’s what happened to make me feel a bit better about the here today gone tomorrow aspect of existence. I was walking around, minding my own business, when ka-bam! I had a baby. So it wasn’t really like that, but you get the gist. All my life there has just been me inside my body, and then all of a sudden, there was a whole other person in there. A person with a heartbeat, and feet to kick me, and arms to hit me. Where did this person come from??? I understand biologically what happens, the egg, the sperm, the meiosis, lots of mitosis, chromosomes coming together, little lizard looking thing in my uterus (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny), yadda yadda. But seriously, one minute there was nothing, and then one ejaculation later, there was a whole new person on the planet (let’s not get into the whole when does life begin debate – just suffice it to say that at one point there was me and mitch and cleo and katafanga and kathmandu, and then at one point Lucy got added into the mix).

So how does this relate to a fear of death you say? Is it that all the crying and poopy diapers made me want to die??? No, of course not. Is it that sleep-deprivation made me feel like I was already dead??? No, of course not. It’s like this, if birth is something from nothing, then it makes sense to me that in order to have something from nothing, you’ve also got to have nothing from something. And that is where death comes in, nothing from something. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without something from nothing so I guess I am going to have to make peace with nothing from something.

Can I just say this though, could all those scientists working hard on longevity get busy because I don’t want to become nothing from something until a really, really, really, really long time from now.

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