We are Stardust

 

A friend sent me info on this book, which I discovered was in the local library with no holds, so I requested it and have been working my way through it.

It's not actually difficult to read.  The author writes well and explains technology so that a layperson like me can understand it.  The first part is the history of our understanding about how bodies work up to the present day.

Where we now know quite a lot about how cells function.

As I read it, I think about my own 'crumbling' body and how I used to run on what I called adrenaline, but now wonder if it wasn't my own personal version of the Energiser Bunny.

Because she is making it clear that we truly are batteries. Biological batteries.  

And I think about how for most of my life I would just keep on working.  I might collapse in a heap from time to time, but as soon as I could re-charge, it would be back to it.

Back to the grind.  The deadlines.  The 'donwanna' jobs that still needed to be done - like inventory, income tax returns, sales tax returns, etm.

Mostly I ran on critical deadlines.  I'd wait until I could wait no longer and then charge at the task full steam until it was done.  Much easier if I'd just done it before it became critical, but it seemed like I needed that jolt of looming deadline to get myself into the mind space of actually doing it.  My version of a fast recharge?

As I read further into the book I become amazed, once again, at how any of us manages to survive, given the complexity of the life dynamic.  Especially in the face of continuing health issues.  The hip bone, connected to the thigh bone - all the way through the entire song.

Over the course of my life I used my body hard and for the most part it served my purposes.  Sometimes with complaints.  Sometimes with outright rebellion.  But eventually, eventually, my batteries would recharge and I would enter the fray again.

The older I got, the longer it would take to recharge.  Just like a 'regular' battery.

And I suppose that eventually I will get to the point where I cannot any longer recharge, and then I will be 'recycled', back into stardust.

What is the meaning of life?  Dunno.  Since I don't know, I have to make my own.  My meaning might be pointless, ultimately.  I don't know that there is a 'god', but on the other hand the complexity of life seems to have some sort of 'intelligence' that drives it.  OTOH, it could be random?

It could be that our lives are a big cosmic joke and there is no meaning.  But the joke's on the joker, because I choose to make my own 'meaning', my own raison d'etre for being here.

Do good, as best I can. Help others.  Be a creative force, not a destructive one - as best I am able.

I still have stash I want to weave down.  I still have words inside me that seem insistent on coming out - be they of any interest to anyone else - or not.  If my body crumbles but I can keep my mind, writing can become my primary creative outlet?

I still have knowledge accumulated over 4 plus decades.  I can nurture younger weavers, encourage them to grow, learn, understand the complexity of the craft.  Just generally encourage those who, like me, continue to take up the reins and keep going, in spite of obstacles.  

I can become Arachne, in the middle of her web, tickling this strand and that one, encouraging this person, helping that one.

Because we are all interconnected.  "No man is an island" as the poem goes.  The more I learn, the more I see this as true.

Anyway, if you, like me, find these sorts of things fascinating, I recommend this book.