Hello there, fellow carbon based life forms! Good to see you again! Yesterday I watched a fascinating short video interview of physicist John Polkinghorn talking about our improbable origins and the composition of our embodied existence. Every particle in us was once in a star, an exploding star. So as the rock bands of my adolescence sang, we are indeed stardust. And when you ponder the razor's edge of conditions under which we could have arisen as intelligent creatures (well, some of us), then you easily end up either with theism or a massively bloated cosmology with unconnected distinct universes whose numbers would have to far surpass Carl Sagan's catch phrase of "Billions and Billions." We are special. Spectacular, even. And most of us do not live like that at all. Too many of us are like Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich, who sought solid gainful employment, successful steps up the ladder of esteem, an advantageous marriage, and a decent life balance of work and entertainment. But poor Ivan has an accident and begins to physically suffer to the point of death. Near the very end, he comes to realize that he's lived falsely, all wrong. Not that there's anything intrinsically amiss with card games, dancing, parties, or hard work. Quite the contrary. But he realizes he'd built up a structure of living without understanding the real nature, meaning, or purpose of anything. He's distraught, then quickly reverses that emotion into a deep satisfaction to have seen the truth even then, and not leaving life in deep error. Then, at the very moment of death, he sees something that gives him joy. For the first time. The structures of life all shed, he sees the light. But the lesson for us all is to look for the light now. Find it, live it, show it. Then we can pass on to the next adventure without the despondent phase, and having helped others to the real enlightenment which will give them the same experience, building with meaning and purpose while we're here, and then leaving when required without a heart filled with regret. Tolstoy seems to hint that the sooner we see the light, the sooner the joy comes. And the stardust will glow once more. For Tolstoy's Ivan follow this URL: https://amzn.to/3zZPU7e
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