When I was very little, my parents left me alone at this party they were attending at night. It had an inground swimming pool and an inground hottub, both lit. The water jets had the water circulating and little whirlpools would form, moving counterclockwise around the edge of the hottub. I could see the dents in the water, but more importantly the shadows and light spots cast on the sides of the hot tub from the refraction of the light through the moving water. I would track one and its progress.
And as a little science nerd, I understood that the whirlpools weren't one thing, water molecules came in and water molecules came out, but the whirlpool remained ... for a little while. Sometimes it would just fade, or split in two, but never constant, never more than a full circle around the edge. I watched and watched, and suddenly I was struck that we as people were these tiny whirlpools, sucking in matter and expelling matter but somehow remaining, for a little while, and the light and the dark on the hot tub walls were very much like our minds, a product of the vortices themselves, but dependent on and therefore less real than the spinning water. And so just as these little water tornadoes would fly apart into nothing, no longer doing anything with the light, so would I and everyone else I knew. I was definitely going to stop spinning, stop taking things in and pushing things out, and instead it would all just settle.
That'll probably come with me to my deathbed. Some days I am very tired of spinning and bouncing against the walls, to no great end, and then when I think of flying apart and the refractions I could no longer produce against those walls, I find it more comforting than the idea of enduring.
And as a little science nerd, I understood that the whirlpools weren't one thing, water molecules came in and water molecules came out, but the whirlpool remained ... for a little while. Sometimes it would just fade, or split in two, but never constant, never more than a full circle around the edge. I watched and watched, and suddenly I was struck that we as people were these tiny whirlpools, sucking in matter and expelling matter but somehow remaining, for a little while, and the light and the dark on the hot tub walls were very much like our minds, a product of the vortices themselves, but dependent on and therefore less real than the spinning water. And so just as these little water tornadoes would fly apart into nothing, no longer doing anything with the light, so would I and everyone else I knew. I was definitely going to stop spinning, stop taking things in and pushing things out, and instead it would all just settle.
That'll probably come with me to my deathbed. Some days I am very tired of spinning and bouncing against the walls, to no great end, and then when I think of flying apart and the refractions I could no longer produce against those walls, I find it more comforting than the idea of enduring.