I hear it time and again - "It is the fact life is short that makes life so precious." "Death is why we must live to the fullest."

I must respectfully but strongly disagree.

I'm often appalled at the attitudes of others toward the general idea of life extension and toward serious thought, research and development given to technologies that may grant us not years but centuries to live. It is surprising how many among us would not want to live forever. It is their opinion that added years cheapen life by robbing it of what they claim gives it meaning - death. It is my opinion that only a life already and profoundly cheapened in one's own mind is further cheapened by added years. Their's is, primarily, love of death, not life. Such individuals seem even more opposed to granting liberty to others to pursue technologies to enable themselves longer lifespans. "How can you dilute the meaning of life", they say. To them, longer life somehow means a life devoid of wonder or surprise. It is my belief a life loved authentically and completely can only be increased in its wonders if given more time. There is far, far more to be experienced, loved and created than the breadth and depth of the present average lifespan allows. If one's passions are shallow and short-lived, perhaps a short life suits you. However, if one's passions seem to have no limit, additional life can mean only more time to express those passions and to discover new ones.

It is not the fact of our ultimate demise that makes life grand, it is life itself, its incredible adventure, its wondrous pleasures and pains, it loves and heartbreaks, its ecstasies, its rapture, its complexities and dynamics, its inexplicabilities that make it what it is. While one has life, one's focus must thoroughly be on life in all its intensities - and life alone. For the moment, it is true - we die - but the fact of our eventual death is an unnecessary and negative distraction from the task at hand - living. Let us live to the fullest because - and only because - we indeed have life. Let life be our only thought. Not a living moment ought to be given over to reflection on death nor should the treasure of life and fullest living be justified by the end of it. Reserve what moments of exploration, discovery, experience, thinking, feeling and creating you are granted solely for living.

Life is its own and only justification. Let today, let this moment be the last you give over to anything other. Deepen your passions and release them to breath. Neither a hundred nor a hundred thousand years will seem nearly enough - if life is your focus.

Contrary to the way these two words are ordinarily used in our cultures, there is no difference at all. What is true is fact and what is fact is true. They are synonyms in my own mind and the minds of many others and ought to be used synoymously in all minds claiming to reason. All too often, there are and have been many who wish to lay claim to "truth" without the messy bothering with fact. They know who they are. There are no shortcuts to authentic wisdom. There is no truth without fact.

If your "truth" is somehow superior to fact, what you claim to have isn't truth. Abstract truths must have a clear chain of reduction from fact, otherwise, they are branches without a trunk, tree without root, wisps of fancy without endurance.

When you think it through clearly, even what we call "decay" is a move forward. All is evolving from what was to what is to what will be. Whatever it is that earns our focus, its evolution will be judged anything from thoroughly positive to thoroughly negative - only in our own view.

Change has no end, nor is it always or even often in directions we believe it ought to go or entirely positive in our estimations. Change is merely change. It is always progressive from one thing to another. It is always a move forward. The idea of "regression" seems rather a human arrogance that a thing ought to have continued on the path we preferred, but rather went the other or another way. This makes one wonder if "decay" isn't more a hindrance to genuine wisdom than it is a help. It seems to blind us to things as they genuinely are in favor of our rather narrow understandings and set of values.

The concept of "decay" is truly only a narrow human view. The so-called "death" of one thing can always and simultaneously be viewed the "birth" of something else or of many other somethings. But then, that being true, there can be no actual "death" or "birth" as much as all is mere continual transition of forms. "Beginnings" and "endings" are only point of view, a mere stop in our mental window of the unstopping stream of the real world, not actual states of anything. There are no true borders between what was, what is and what will be. It is all river.

Constant change forward. It alters one's perspective and, in the least, inspires me to give up mourning the seeming end of anything for the excitement of seeing what comes next.

Recently, in response to the Questions and Reflections "What is your favorite distraction?", I mentioned my love of treehouses and how I love to dream of living in one full time.

Yes. As a matter of fact, I've even purchased them deliberately from antiques dealers and curiosity shops, and thrift or bargain stores. Although I've not tried them, estate sales might be another good source. If I suspect the person is still living and identifiable in any way, I've tried my best to return what I've discovered. Nevertheless, if there is no hope of returning them to their author or the intended recipient, they are always an incredibly fascinating and charming eye into the intimacy of a person previously unknown to me of which I'd never otherwise have opportunity. I believe we too often underestimate the value of even a single glimpse into the usually inaccessible heart and mind of another human being. Letters, postcards, diaries, journals may or may not be addressed to someone specific, however, I believe they all are a single voice's appeal to anyone who will listen, and I believe we ought to. We must, if we too want someone to hear and protect what is in our deepest heart and thoughts.

I've come to believe the private papers of the deceased, for lack of anyone else to care for them, become my responsibility and privilege to protect along with others who believe as I do. In some sense, these things become letters to me and anyone who happens to read and enjoy them. To me, it's a pure tragedy for any voice to go silent forever. Preserving, reading, and communicating papers such as these, in some sense, keeps their author alive. What better gift could one give to another than to give them voice beyond their own lifetimes?

Since I was very young, I've written tens of thousands of words which, from time to time have a specific recipient in mind. Most of what I've written has no audience other than anyone who discovers those thoughts and is willing to read and keep them safe. In hopes something of value will survive me, they are my letters to anyone and everyone and they say everything I'm willing and able to say in them. I can't help but think that every letter ever written or ever to be written is, ultimately, a letter to us all, a letter to live beyond the author until there is no one left to read them.

It depends on the context in which you're judging and whether you are speaking literally or metaphorically. Science has its general definitions of what is and is not "alive", however, science is not the only user of the term. Most of us use the word in a variety of ways, much of the time metaphorically. Sadly, most of us confuse the times when we ought to use it literally and when metaphorically. Of course, even science has no razor-edged line between "living" and "not living". As I understand it, there are things in nature which seem to be one or the other depending on context. I believe viruses are one example of that.

Still, because language is a free and open human invention, each of us is at liberty to use language in any way we choose as long as those to whom we communicate understand our meaning in our words. If we wish to use the word "alive" to describe a thing where science would not strictly define it as such or when others might not have chosen as we have, we can do so but must be prepared to explain why we use that term so that others will understand our meaning. Agreement with our use, of course, is not required for that meaning to be communicated.

Are we "alive"? It does seem to be a matter of opinion, provided we are prepared to explain why we think so. Is a stone "alive"? I would answer yes from a certain point of view, however, I wouldn't argue the stone is "alive" in the specific ways that I am "alive". I can use the term with a stone but, I must concede the stone isn't "alive" using precisely the same definition I might use for myself or a mouse, plankton or virus. Context - to include point of view - is everything.

What makes us "alive"? Again, science explains it is the precise behaviors at the atomic and molecular levels of the matter in our bodies that leads to "life" in the various ways in which we define it. I've come to call "life" a complex and dynamic emergent behavior of basic particles leading, ultimately, to madness never before occurring in nature and never to occur in precisely the same way again. I like to be humorous and sometimes when I say this I'm being funny, at other times I'm not. We humans do seem to bring a quality to nature it has never before attained, at least here on Earth. Our imaginations are that quality and, as many know, the more unusual, the more insane, the more unique the point of view. Madness is our gift to nature or, from a more basic point of view, madness is nature's gift to itself. Without that brand of madness, there are paths of development nature would not have taken.

Life is, perhaps finally, a somewhat reliable expression at one level of complexity of that inherent unpredictability at the most basic. This would explain why there is observable variance in the quantity and quality of life - why life ebbs and flows.

As I like to say somewhat poetically - The "All" or the "One" is an ever-changing stream of folds, twists, eddies, whirlpools, falls, pools, floods and droughts. Incredibly magical things happen at some places and times in the stream and intense silence at others with seemingly infinite variance in between. For a moment, the stream gives us life and then, without a pause in its behaviors, the stream folds and twists that life to something, someplace, sometime else.

Of course, it's more accurate to say it is the stream itself that comes to life in places and times and not in others. We are not OF the stream, we ARE the stream and it is us. No real beginnings, no genuine ends. No birth or death - only flow.

It seems instinctive to say the best celebration of peace is to be at peace yourself and to encourage peace in others.

Just the other day, sitting in a chair reading the poetry of Mary Oliver and writing in the evening sunshine out in my very large yard and meadow, I came to sit very still, very quietly, letting breaths come as they may and with little thought, and I listened for a good long while with eyes closed and spirit opened wide. Nature very much seemed to have designed an incredible "perfect" moment of stillness just for me. It was quite unexpected but an intuitive choice to be at peace at that moment, and when it came to an end, it seemed to have lasted many years. The secret to that moment wasn't the sunshine, the place, the time. The secret wasn't a chain of events leading to it or the poetry I was reading. The simple secret was my own unquestioning will to allow it to happen once I'd recognized what it was. I could have ignored it or fought against it or carelessly filled it with some mental chatter or trivial chore, but I chose something else.

That is the secret to peace - the will to let peace happen and, if you come to experience authentic peace, to do whatever you can to describe it to others in the hopes they might will it in their own lives and, in turn, pass that experience and secret on to more.

My hopes that many of you find in your hearts the ability to will peace if only for one memorable moment. May it seem a lifetime to you and may the lasting and vivid memory of it feed a great many similar moments to come.

Naumadd

I've come to see myself as every bit a "druid" as one can be, at least in authentic spirit. The patterns in my own life over a great many years have seemed to parallel the cycles of the trees, their lives, their spirituality. I cannot help but delight in their spring awakenings and their baby steps day to day to day to the fullest emerald burst of summer. This year in particular, I've attempted to use haiku and other poetic forms to journal the steady progress of the trees around me from their past winter dreaming through to the rapidly approaching dreaming to come. In the past, the focus of my journaling was myself and those around me. I deliberately chose this year to focus what I'm able on trees and on the wildlife they harbor. The rewards in experience and creativity have been incredible. If it is in my power to continue in this way into the next year and the next and throughout the rest of my life, I very much will it.

As the trees now prepare for autumn fires before their long exposed sleep, I feel an intense responsibility to watch over them, care for them, and journal their rest through the winter. This is not merely a romantic notion. It is a clear and intense feeling of empathy with those who have given me so much in return and who stand vulnerable to less kind hearts. To some, it will seem silly that anyone, let alone a mature man, would literally feel pain and tear-provoking sadness with the falling of a single leaf. Silly or not, I've been watching these friends for months, I've written much about them. I've loved them, touched them, even preserved parts of them in ways I'm able. To see them lose their leaves, a normal part of nature or not, is quite an emotional shock. It is as much a painful loss as the loss of a good friend, a child, a parent or lover. As much as I delight in the extraordinary colors to come, I cannot help but be a little afraid for the trees. Yes, I admit it's a bit silly from a certain point of view. Is what I feel a reflection of what they feel or would feel if they could? I prefer to think so. I suppose it's harmless and, possibly, of benefit to us both. Maybe saying so benefits others too.

One thing I know of this emotional silliness is this: I feel as I do quite differently than in most any other year of my life because I made a deliberate genuine attempt to be much more intensely awake to life outside my own species for the bulk of the year. I allowed my heart, mind, spirit to open to their delights and pains, their fears and ecstasies. I cannot help feeling they appreciate that compassion and are the better for it ... as am I.

It is autumn when, as nature descends into dream, we ought to awaken most fully to the stewardship we so casually and often inauthentically claim. Perhaps, in our acute awareness of the vulnerability of the rest of nature, we discover our own fragility, our greatest meaning and become keenly educated in our own potentially destructive and creative powers.

As the pagans of long ago and of today have known, autumn is an incredibly magical time. As I've learned, one has to be a bit magical oneself to see it.

My apologies in advance to those already aware and those who have already attempted to bring awareness of this to Gaia. I just discovered this website and organization which seems to parallel something I coincidentally spoke of recently in another forum - the problem of overpopulation and overconsumption. If nothing else, this website brings to more common awareness the point when the human population has consumed all the renewable resources the planet will produce in the calendar year, as well as the point we've passed when our collective waste exceeded the planet's ability absorb it. As it happens, the overshoot day for 2008 was today, September 23rd.

Their Media Backgrounder document makes for an interesting read describing an organization that opens yet another opportunity to stand side by side with those taking authentic action to make changes.


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