The miracle of death

 

I was thinking, as I looked at some of Cro's pictures today, as I often do, of what she had said about ‘can it be true that all these thoughts will just disappear when I die?’. The miracle of death. And of course it was true in the concrete world and there is no other world in which our own thoughts lie, unless there is something of which I am unaware. And Cro is dead, and all the thoughts that made her do not exist in the same way that they did when she was alive. And I do think a little about what it will be like when my own thoughts disappear with the brain that thought them, when the heart that fuelled it stops being able to send blood to that brain.

I suppose some of this wondering is a trick of the brain because of our persistent belief in our own selves as things that are not our bodies. Hard to believe that our weightless thoughts have some matter behind them. But they do. And when that matter starts to disorganise and find its way back to chaos then the thoughts will have nothing to support them.

Our actual thoughts will be gone, with our memories and emotions and prejudices and even our love. But does that matter if we have always lived morally and loved generously and left the people we knew with memories of our own that match that self? If you believe some of the principles and philosophical implications of Quantum theories then (as I understand it) the only reality that exists is where something exists in relation to something else. Or someone exists in relation to another person. Or in relation to all the people that they know. And the nature of that ‘relationship’ has to change when that person dies. There is no future interaction or contact. So if I am now thinking of what ‘I’ will be after death, I will literally not be here any more. I won’t be anything. But the thing that survives in my sense of self today is the memory of Cro, and my mother, and my father, and all those other people who have already died. And the memory of me will survive in a similar way in the memories of all those who knew me until they themselves meet their entropic fate.

I can see that it feels a bit strange to be thinking today with a brain and mind that will literally cease to be, but it is not all that strange if every single person who has ever lived has either already made that change from being to not being or will at some point in the future. The only strangeness of it comes from the ‘optical illusion’ or ‘cognitive illusion’ that comes from the way our minds work. This idea of a ‘me’ inside my head is a bit hard to shake off, and does little harm. But it does make you wonder at the miracle of death when in reality there is no miracle there. All this miracle amounts to is the thing that differentiates all us living things from the mute stones of matter, plus a little soupcon of human exceptionalism (unless it turns out that dolphins also believe that they have souls).

So I am happy to embrace my transient existence as a thinking being. It is not that bad at all. I do get all the pleasure of adding new experiences and feelings and knowledge to this cauliflower-shaped organ where all my thoughts seem to be. And there is always room for new ones. That is miracle enough for me.

And should it happen that you are reading this at a time distant enough in the future that I have already gone from order to chaos, then take this as a warm reminder that you do not have to grip tightly to any of your joys to feel them, even to the joy of your own mind and self. As the sensible Blake said:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise