In his 1907 book Creative Evolution, philosopher-scientist Henri Bergson describes an impulse of becoming, a universal force that underlies the existence of matter and animates life. When applied to living systems, this force propels life forward, providing elements of purpose without delineating purpose itself.
The impulse of Life Force keeps my body and its organs functioning twenty-four hours a day. It uses energy I have appropriated from other matter, some of it once living and some of it not, while my negentropy, as Erwin Schrödinger dubbed the character of life, endures.
I had my first cardiac event when I was 28-years old after a nightmare about my five-year-old daughter, and endurance has been on my mind ever since. This year marks 50 years of my ever present awareness of death. At any moment over the past five decades I could have died without warning, but I seem to have dodged that bullet, not just once, but several times at the hands of talented physicians. I even have had a succession of four Cardio-Defibrillators implanted in my chest for the past 26 years that respond to life-threatening arrhythmia; that’s some high-tech bullet dodging. Thus I endure.
Nature isn’t interested in me, however. As far as Nature is concerned, I’m just a statistic, one eight-and-a-half billionth percent of the human species. Few of those billionths are remembered, and I too am among those who will quickly be forgotten. Within several generations, nobody then alive will ever have known me; I will be reduced to a story of interest to very few, at best. My name on a plaque commemorating construction of the fire house on 2nd Street West will last longest, perhaps, while details of the life behind my name will have faded away entirely.
And yet, I eagerly look forward to each day, feeling as if there is something worthwhile to accomplish. The Life Force is not judgmental; when it comes to personal motivation and sense of purpose, everything is acceptable. Accordingly, I improvise my life while in service to endurance. The Life Force is constantly switched to the “on” position; the closest I get to “off” is when I’m sleeping, but that’s due to the nature of unconsciousness. Conscious or not, life powers on moment to moment without pause or hesitation, that is, until it doesn’t.
Whether consciousness arises from life or life arises from consciousness is a matter of some debate. Materialists argue that consciousness cannot exist apart from physical form, but using entanglement as an example, the faster-than-light-speed synchronized behavior of widely separated split particles, thinkers like Bergson and a panoply of theoretical quantum physicists argue otherwise, i.e. that consciousness precedes matter and even spacetime. Taking it further is speculation that so-called particles are mere temporary perturbations within oscillating quantum fields that pervade all of spacetime. In other words, everything everywhere is connected to everything else. Does this eliminate the entire concept of death? Perhaps there are no bullets to dodge.
“Meanwhile,” as Steven Colbert used to say, I purposefully get up, brush my teeth, take a tub, eat a little food, swallow my pills, get dressed, check and respond to my email, look at my calendar, attend to my Yoga and Meditation practice, and move on with each day. With my daughter recovering from a major stroke, my family really needs me right now; gratefully, I continue to endure.
Painting: Song of the Lark by Jules Breton
Be First to Comment