This fine February morning I lie on my couch contemplating my mortality and how to cheat death or atleast slow it down.
At four decades and perilously hurtling towards my fifth, life and its existential ephemerality is more than a burdensome reality.
I have changed my diet and slowed down my approach and attachment to things.
I try to enjoy reading and meditating more. Life can be beautiful if you embrace the peace that comes with the stilling of mind and body.
Mortality is an appreciation of a finite existence against a scale of infinity and permanence.
Sometimes I also take a jab at myself and society through my writing and by creating art. Ideas, commentary and reflections which, if viewed through an equally contemplative and objective prism, aren’t short of being cathartic and therapeutic.
Creative and Artistic expression through literature and fine art have proven to be the next best thing in our futile attempts to achieve immortality. The Statutes and Sphinx of Ozymandias may be lost but the hieroglyphs linger. The Spanish Armadas and the prided Frigates of French and British Admiralty may rest in their watery grave but the ink blots of Shakespeare live on in our theaters and in the libraries of our minds and culture.
The cavemen may be gone but their rock art and paintings persist.
Pop culture and science fiction have popularized ideas of time travel and bio-tech and cybernetics as alternatives to outliving our biological shell. But these ideas are still far from being perfected or implemented. RoboCop, Terminator, MCU’s Vision, Jor- El’s consciousness, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Moreau’s Chimeras are a long way off.
Immortality does not lend itself easily to the machinations of mortals. After all they are just that, mere mortals.
Art is one way. Science and technology maybe another. But there is a third. Another alternative. One that rests not on our futile actions, but inaction. A way that requires no thriving or yearning. Just realization and acceptance.
A realization that all we are and care about. All and who we know or have known is inexorably linked to this pale blue dot marooned in the space-time continuum orbiting a yellow dwarf of a star. Perfunctory on a universal scale of things.
Similar to our realization is acceptance. We must accept that our sun will be extinguished in an expansionary whimper. E=mc2.
Burning more helium and ballooning into a red giant consuming mercury and Venus and perhaps even the earth. While all the other distant ice planets and moons will finally have their day in the sun (no pun intended). And when that happens our ashes. All that DNA. All that carbon-based gump and spark will be dispersed, re-gathered and recycled as energy and stardust. Perhaps to commence another remarkable journey amongst the stars and elements as our white dwarf cools and fades away. But don’t worry that isn’t happening for another 5 to 7 billion years thence.
That my dear is the immortality we can all wish for.
DrAlexanderGrey 