Today is the day the funeral process begins for Y's father. I will not be speaking. I have nothing to say about him that would benefit anyone except my wife (and our talks are just that). It may seem strange that I would mention not speaking, although I believe somehow that when I come to the end of my life, I will have spoken at the majority of funerals I attended. If that doesn't make sense, perhaps you don't know me very well. Its not that I am a "mike hog", its just that my gift is empathy, and somehow I've developed a talent for putting ideas into words that hit people where they need to be hit. Plus you probably won't find me at the funerals of very many people, as false sentiment comes hard for me and I'm genuinely close to very few.
So in the absence of relevant thoughts on the deceased, I have found myself philosophizing on the subject of death itself, and puzzling over cultural customs and the effects they have on inter-family dynamics. Seems pretty cold, right? Yeah... But I am at heart a thinking man, so there's gotta be something going on up there; and I guess thats better than thinking about the Cowboy game, or work, or the price of tea in China. Besides, none of those things make for a worthwhile blog entry (except maybe the Cowboys. just kidding. kinda.) Anyway... here's some thoughts to consider for coffee talk fodder.
Someone once said that death is the only supernatural event most of us will ever experience. There is a physical moment there where the being that has spent untold hours and days as a person literally splits; leaving only the physical vessel in our realm. My question is, where does the rest of it go? I mean its here, in our midst, with us in the form of a person--then BAM--not here anymore. Even the most anti-religious of us have to admit that the soul/spirit/whatever you want to call it part doesn't just cease to exist. Every known physics law of the of the universe tells us that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes its form (google Einstein if you don't believe me). And, like the rest of the universe, a person is made up of the physical- what we can see, hear, feel; and the energy, which, while unseen, is undeniably there in the form of thoughts, emotions, and other elements commonly referred to as the personality/spirit/soul.
Picture this: 99.99% of what humans experience exists in a three dimensional world. We see not only how wide and how tall things are, but we also see depth. Imagine if we lived instead with an awareness of only two dimesions. A sphere would look, to us , like a circle. It wouldn't mean that the rest of the sphere wasn't there, only that we couldn't percieve it. How much more likely, then, that the energy part of a person simply moves into a different dimension; one of which we cannot ordinarily perceive yet is still there; than simply somehow defies all the laws of the known universe and ceases to exist. And if that realm is there, wouldn't that pesky .01% that keeps anything from being absolute account for many of the fringe-type paranormal phenomena which seem to so delight the human race?
I don't know... i'm just sayin...
