When you believe there is only really one thing, all that exists, now, then nothing is ever really destroyed.1 Its meaning changes. Its patterns re-arranged. Its matter and energy recycled. All things change, but they remain all things. We may never know, while we live, if our consciousness persists in an imperceptible afterlife.2 But even if there is nothingness after death, your pattern can go on.3 Never lose hope, then, for even the lowliest person4 has an afterlife, and endures the way anything endures.5 We are made of long dead, recycled, stars.6 Isn’t sharing the fate of stars good enough? Eventually all things end. The pattern cycles all back to 7. So, above all, be thankful for things while they can endure, favored by the pattern to be part of its great dance,7 and part of our short lives. And when we are burdened with of our continued existence in the face of loss,8 we can at least be grateful for memory and legacy. And also for the promise of new things we may come to love. Out of chaos9 and confusion can come clear thinking, and attainment of wisdom. Strength is gained through trials. Clarity realized through disillusionment. The power of restarting a cycle: conclusions are also beginnings.10 Only when you dissolve yourself into 7 can you let go. Only by re-emerging with new meaning,11 can you endure.
1 The First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy is conserved. The internal energy of a system only changes as heat flows in or out of it.
2 “We really haven't got any great amount of data on the subject, and without data how can we reach any definite conclusions?” - Thomas Edison
3 “Our death is just another moment in time. Life goes on without us. Our impact has the potential to be immortal, however.” - Dogen
4 Matthew 5:3-12
5 Even in taking one breath ensures you have already changed the world.
6 “We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” - Cosmos, Carl Sagan
7 “Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?” - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
8 Survivor guilt is when a person feels themselves to have done wrong by surviving when others have not.
9 “Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” - “Chaos is an Atmosphere Hanging on a Wall”, Edward Norton Lorenz
10 An ancient symbol of this is the Ouroboros (tail-devouring snake) depicting a serpent eating its own tail.
11 Quantum mechanical theory says information is transformed, but conserved, just like energy.
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