Wow. Well I hardly imagine I will still be alive at that time…. But here goes…. to the writing group prompt: Write your diary entry for a date 20 years from now.

Not that this image has anything to do with twenty years in the future, but I always enjoy a chance to show people the hidden worlds revealed by my scanning electron microscope. This is the ball joint enabling motion of a bumblebee’s antenna. Note the varying length of the hairs. Those that would cause interference otherwise are shorter! I just came across a report on some research showing that these short hairs actually lubricate the interface of these joints!

Eighty three years old.

Impossible.

Several friends have birthdays this week.

In a few days will be the birthday of the person who used to be my favorite aunt. I suppose she’s still my favorite among my parents female siblings, but none of them really care to keep any communication going with me.

It’s likely my fault. I never did feel like I fit in with the family, and for most of my life, friends have been more important than family.

Despite what many social scientists have shown is an astounding 25% of American families with estranged children, it still seems like most people, including those of my first circle of friends, prioritize family time. That is ok. At age 83, I find myself more and more satisfied with my dead friends who never met me, supplementing, but of course never supplanting, the remaining live ones.

Yes, the dead friends. The writers, some, if not most, or even almost all, of them long dead before my birth, keep me company. And anyway, the cosmologists assure us that time, as we understand it passing, is an illusion.

The only reality is eternity.

What has been, as well as what will be, is already always here.

As John Newton wrote, “When we’ve been here 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we’d first begun.”

All we have to do in order to let this fact of our reality sink in is go outside on a clear, moonless (dark!) night. Admittedly, this is not that frequent in Michigan, so one must plan in advance to be able to take advantage of it. But, on finding yourself outside on such a clear moonless night, look up and think about when the light from any six visible stars started its photonic journey to our retinas.

Hmm, seems like I have been writing for a third person. Who is that? Is it my own ghost? Is it the universal soul? Who the heck do I think will ever read this?

Who?

You?

medication pills isolated on yellow background — Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Not directly related to my content, except at the macro-scale of the question mark!

Bronze Snake Charmer Figurine from India. Nothing like a pipe and cobra to encourage contemplation!

Such a pleasure to be able to return to my Thursday writing group. The prompt was:

“I have never contemplated…” Hmm…I dug right in. SOC (stream of consciousness). Other members of the group apparently experience my writing as a flood of words. They think I type fast. They are not the only ones who think so, but I have always made errors and the severe arthritis in my right hand in particular means the typos are more numerous than ever. “Nevertheless, she persisted….”

I have never contemplated not contemplating a significant decision. And that is just the problem. Because I have learned, through painful experience, that it’s just the things that we don’t know that we should be contemplating that are going to, as they say, nip us in the ass, or, more politely, become a sea of alligators surrounding us.

You may or may not have noticed that the writer of this paragraph has changed from the first person singular to the first person plural, and now to the second person. Shortly, the writer will change from this hated second person narrative, allowed by conservative writing pundits only to poets writing in the love lost genre, to the omniscient third person.

Getting back to the subject at hand, the contemplationless situations in the writer’s life, is easy. That is due to the fact that all humans have no choice but to participate in the human condition. Thus, each of us has much, indeed most, of our life in common with all other humans.

So just what is the nature of this thing called the human condition? The root cause of it all is consciousness. A way to explain human consciousness is the ability to keep multiple things and viewpoints in mind simultaneously. Thus, humans have always, since Eve staked the claim for choice, been able to eat, or not eat, the apple, whereas a chimpanzee faced with the same apple, in similar nominal circumstances, admittedly here left to the reader / listener to define, will eat the apple.

Other animals, for the most part, crows, ravens, elephants and some others intentionally habituated to the human world excepted, are simply driven by nature’s preprogrammed instructions. And here is the problem. We have to choose our actions.

Have you noticed that I changed back to the first person, moving in a single paragraph among different points of view? Tough bananas for those writing instructors who don’t like that. I am convinced that this paragraph is perfectly clear and not confusing at all. And if it is confusing, it’s because you, dear reader, are in a rush. Slow down for goodness’ sake, and take in these pearls of understanding.

So, if individuals take not the time to consciously choose, then the subconscious mind will take over the choosing function, which will then closely resemble that of a hard programmed member of the animal kingdom. Modern humans have this situation compounded by the fact that we have multiple layers, only partially overlapping, of loyalties, demanding that we move in direction x, y or z.

This compels the thoughtful contemplators among us to create a personal value hierarchy, or valuarchy. More on this later.