Death

Since impermanence, emptiness, and selflessness have been such underlying themes in our explorations, consider once again for a moment the fleetingness of life. Our bodies, quantized condensations of vital protoplasm—certainly among the most complex and differentiated conglomerations of matter and energy we know of in the universe—arise and pass away. And with their passing fade and pass the details of each individual life and its personal expression. What is left are the photographs, the home videos, whatever migrated to YouTube or Facebook, the memories, the little triumphs and gestures, the stories we who are still here recall or tell ourselves silently about who someone was or wasn’t; and about the missed moments too: what might have happened but didn’t, what could have been but wasn’t. …