Life is pleasant, easy going and simple here. And by here I’m referring to our small town, high desert, rural community.
You see reason, common sense and practicality often override rules, restrictions and regulations. And there appears to be a sense of decency and cooperation among folks around here.
We are just regular people dealing with the everyday simplicities of life.
As I see it, we have the basic components which make up and bind together our physical sphere of existence in this universe in which we dwell.
And the most fundamental of these basics could be summed up in a short list.
Space - Yes we have space. We have it by seemingly limitless cubic miles out here.
Time - Sure we’ve got time. We’ve got all the time in the world. We have yesterday, today and tomorrow all around us. Still we are forever wrapped up here in our permanent ongoing bubble of Now.
Freedom - Well freedom is a concept. If you can envision, desire and declare freedom, if you can feel, and experience it, well then you can have it and it’s all yours.
Sure we’ve got that. We are each as free or unfree as we want to be out here.
Love - Now here you have an interesting commodity.
All of our books, plays and poems have kicked this one around for centuries.
Perhaps this is why I struggle to identify, define and label something so simple and pure.
You sense, touch and feel love, or you don’t. You can not hold it, bottle it, or possess it. It’s not patentable, saleable, visible or even very creditable. It just is.
It’s the illusive quality of the very existence of life, I would say.
And the more you try to nail it down, the more elusive it seems to become.
When all else in life goes off with the wind, well it’s the one quality which lingers, echoes and haunts the endless canyons of our memory in our time space continuum.
As I see it, it’s more of a reason for being than something to achieve.
I suppose you could say it’s the essence of you and I and the thread of life which flows between us.
There also are other basics we could touch on here such as beauty, hope and joy.
I would like to wish you hope and the opportunity to experience and discover the beauty of life and great joy it brings to live it.
And there is life itself.
Do you think there is life after death or is there death after life?
What really is life anyhow and how does it coexist with the cold, inert matter of this universe?
I know that scientists, chemists and biologists try to define it as best they can but they fall far short. They are only describing how life functions, manifests and behaves in this material universe.
Some techies maintain, believe it or not, that it’s all a giant computer simulation. I think those guys have been in the cyber world for much too long.
They should go out into the green fields, meadows, deserts and mountains to view life first hand face to face. That is where you find life in abundance.
Bees and butterflies are prolific throughout the meadow. Birds tweet their little hearts out in the trees. Seeds blow in the wind, spread and multiply creating more life.
Fresh grass and flowers of spring burst out of what looked like frozen dead soil just a while ago. And it’s all so breathtakingly pure, simple and beautiful.
However, I see this as just the manifestation of life coming into and remaking our physical environment. It’s a dance of creativity, vitality and animation.
If you’ve actually seen grass, shrubs or trees growing out of solid rock then you know what I mean.
But I think the essence of life itself is seeing, experiencing and being part of all this. It’s your awareness of being here, perceiving and communicating with it.
And the most basic thing, as I see it, is we are each of us, unique individual life generating units.
Dan O’Connor can be reached at danhughoconnor@gmail.com
