Life

We all start off from nothing, one moment there are two people and the next there are three, as if by magic. When we die the consciousness leaves the body, just a collection of cells that eventually crumbles away into nothing. The nitrogen is released from the body, the plants take up the nitrogen, and the whole cycle of life starts again. What is the consciousness? Where does it come from? Does it suddenly arise from nothing as a function of synapses that start to fire?

We are nothing. We are just a collection of cells, different parts that all function together according to the fundmental law of nature: procreation, survival. Selfish really. Why then do we miss people so much when they are gone? What is it that makes us human, that makes one person different from the next? Somehow throughout the course of a life that silly collection of cells, those firing synapses, form an individual with its own personality, that makes its own choices. It is beautiful. It has the potential to do so much good in the world, to make such a difference to the people around us that know us and love us. Most of us are lucky enough to be born of love, to start of as the very best hopes and wishes of our parents. Throughout our life that selfish collection of cells somehow learns to give, to love, to do good and eventually perhaps to create life of itself. If you give life, and part of you forms a child, then so if that child comes to give life then in a way a part of you is passed on and still lives. If I look back then I am my parents, my grandparents and their grandparents - some infinitesimal part of them lives in me. Weird.

So as we come from nothing we go to nothing. We cannot expect that there is anything after to come. There might be, but we can never know. Just remember though that the baby in the womb knows only that as his world, and the rest of us look on waiting for him to be "truly born" and to realise what comes next. How do we know that there are not others, now passed on, that do not look on us in "life" in the same way? We can only try to be the best person that we can be during our lives, because that is the only certainty, this conscious life that we live. Or is it? Someone, I think it was Descartes, once postulated "I think, therefore I am." I think he should have said was "I think, therefore I think I am."

Sausage

Had a chicken sausage today for the first time. Note to self: chicken's really don't make very good sausages. Next time stick to ones the butcher has made.