Day 205 Mortality

July 2, 2015

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70^th years where I write and illustrate a blog on each day’s gift.)

I see a cluster of new tiny orange mushrooms on my lawn and thoughts of my own mortality arise. Strange how these things happen. 

I ponder how these mushrooms popped out of the ground on their own, with no action on my part. They will continue to do this with or without me. Then I think of how life will go on—the sun will still rise and set, traffic jams will continue to irritate people, musicians will write new songs that I will never hear, artists will create new art that I will never see, fashions will continue to come and go, and teenagers will always rebel. 

Because, as a human being, I experience life through an egocentric viewpoint, it is difficult to imagine that life will go on without my perspective. I just ran across a video of my father—still on my iPhone from last year. I watched and reminded myself that the video is a representation of life but not real life itself. 

On the one hand, our powerful intellects come inexorably to the conclusion that we, like all other living things around us, must one day die. Yet on the other, the one thing that these minds cannot imagine is the very state of nonexistence; it is literally inconceivable. Death therefore presents itself as both inevitable and impossible…The fact is, whenever we try to imagine the reality of our deaths we stumble. We simply cannot envision actually not existing.” ~ Stephen Cave in Immortality

So today, I enter the moment and greet the tiny orange mushrooms, knowing that my photo’s life will probably outlive me.

My gift today is a cluster of tiny orange mushrooms.

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> Day 206 Curious Reptilian Sound

You can find links to my other posts on this project here:

http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html