{"id":2224,"date":"2021-08-12T04:26:15","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T04:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?page_id=2224"},"modified":"2022-05-09T07:06:06","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T07:06:06","slug":"what-goes-around-comes-around-endlessly","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/tree-house\/biographies\/what-goes-around-comes-around-endlessly\/","title":{"rendered":"What goes around, comes around (endlessly?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Endless cycles of birth, growth, death, reintegration, and birth again. That is kind of my whole outlook on existence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What goes around, comes around – like a really thorough recycling program, but not just for your plastic bottles, but for all of time and space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel that way because I was raised fervently non-religiously. God seemed non-existent and unreal in my life. I was raised as a materialist, and there was absolutely no talk about an afterlife or some grand reward or family reunion waiting for us up in some heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it was all considered to be bunk by my Dad. He was the arbiter of what made sense in our house (like it or not). Physics (vaguely referenced via paraphrasing Einstein) and “common sense” (apropos of nobody) seemed to be enough to validate all the laws you needed for life. Not necessarily a happy life, mind you, just an apparently rational, logical one. The old man was big on rules and order, with occasional detours into silliness and humour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read once that atoms can exist for 500 million years or something. Given that an average housefly lives for 24 hours, an average cat for 10 or 15 years, and an average Canadian Male for about 78 years, all living beings are pretty much little more than a flash in the cosmic pan time-wise. We can think all our grand thoughts, but we really don’t mean shit in the grand cosmic scheme of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the Buddhist idea of interdependence really rings true here: each large structure relies on the smaller things within it to bring it into “being”. Us human specks on Earth affect (and infect) our planet, and eventually our solar system, the same way all the bacteria and microbes that live on and inside each of us have a role to play in our own existence. And time-wise, being to being, procreating down through a zillion generations, we truly rely on those who literally and figuratively came before us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, as I remember pouring my Mother’s ashes into a hole in the soil next to a skinny little rose bush in 1995, I have imagined since that the atoms she’d once used would intermingle with those of the earth, and the molecules of whatever was left of her somehow would provide nutrients to the roses in that little cemetery garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other than that, the rest of it is just for the sake of poetry, beauty, and sentiment. My mother’s father had been a gardener, and cultivated pretty rose bushes outside his house. It seems logical that his daughter’s ashes could help to do the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See? Poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Life is Absurd! Exploring Albert Camus\u2019 Rebellious Philosophy: https:\/\/www.thecollector.com\/albert-camus-rebellious-philosophy\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Endless cycles of birth, growth, death, reintegration, and birth again. That is kind of my whole outlook on existence. What goes around, comes around – like a really thorough recycling program, but not just for your plastic bottles, but for all of time and space. I feel that way because I was raised fervently non-religiously. … Continue reading What goes around, comes around (endlessly?)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":62,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2224","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2224"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3069,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2224\/revisions\/3069"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}