Heroes Not Zombies

These are challenging times. I have no doubt about that. A pandemic, wars and violence, the widespread effects of climate change, to name a few global ones. But Life continues. The cycles of the seasons continue. All living creatures continue to adapt in order to do more than survive. They thrive.

Aren’t you astonished at the sheer existence of Life in the Universe? Isn’t it the most striking, seemingly unlikely happening? The continuous emergence of Life and lives from the flow of all that is?

Aren’t you astonished at the creation of another life? Of the birth of a baby and the utterly unpredictable, constantly surprising unfolding of a unique individual as that baby grows into a mature human being?

I am astonished daily in this world of wonder, creativity and diversity.

I read recently about what Gaston Bachelard wrote about nests in his Poetics of Space.

Isn’t that wonderful? I hadn’t thought of a nest that way before. I’m busy attempting to reclaim a much neglected garden, removing the biggest, longest, thickest wild clematis and wild something from the Rosaceae family! Every now and again I find the remains of a nest. This one, still well formed, with a single blue egg with a hole in it, the little robin, I think, long ago having pecked its way through the shell, been nurtured, then drawing on all its instinctive knowledge and courage and hope, jumped out of the nest on its first flight.

There’s so much hope in new life. No, it’s more than hope. It’s confidence.

Would I bother to get up each morning if I weren’t confident I’d live through this day and return to my bed, to sleep and to dream again, tonight?

This isn’t a question of logic or statistics or probability or utility. It’s the deep, strong, unceasing flow of a creative, increasingly complex, universe from which I emerge for a short time, a unique human being at a unique moment in this diverse, massively interconnected web of existence.

We dream, we hope, we have the confidence to live, survive and grow.

Not just we humans, but all living creatures, and maybe all of reality, wherever we look, astonished yet again by our existence.