The sobering reality of death

I am back. I will tell you it was a sad and sobering funeral today. I am thinking that it can only be like that when a 42 year old man is laid to rest. It was standing room only at the funeral. That is a testament to the lives that Kelly touched in his short time on this Earth.

Things like this happen in life and the natural thing to do is to try to make sense of it. Oddly for me, I vacillate between extremes ala "My Dinner With Andre". I can see the possibility of both sides being "true" or "correct". On the one hand, I WANT to believe, as I think we all do, that there is some "meaning" to life. I hold on to the hope, which I realize is not a strategy nor something to really hang one's hat on, that there is some deeper meaning to life. I have not been able to tie it all up into a neat little package, yet, but that it can be done, given enough time.

The other hand holds that life is really a random series of events and things. Any meaning is imposed by the "thinker" mostly as a way to deal with the incredible discomfort that comes with the notion that life is random and uncontrollable by the self. That gives rise to a sense of helplessness and sense of what ever you do does not matter. It is a rather cynical and jaded view AND it is equally as valid the "life has meaning" and is knowable notion.

I can straddle those two worlds. I can accept both as possible and equally valid. The only way to define it is to prove it, by observation, one way or the other. The big problem there is that personal bias will always enter into the observations one makes. On one hand, you look harder to find meaning and maybe ascribe meaning that does not really exist or you believe that any meaning found is by its very nature done just to decrease the level of anxiety that the thought of a meaningless existence can entail.

There is no right answer here. This is just a statement of how my mind is bouncing at this moment in time. There is a lot to be said for the work of early Quantum physicists like Heisenberg, Einstein, Planck and Bohr. Their works really work at the micro and macro vantage points of life. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is a fine idea that gets at how we work with our observations. It also gets to the truth that what you see is not necessarily what you think you see. Besides, you cannot be sure that your very presence and act of observation has not tainted the observations.

It all makes for an uncertain world. It is an ambiguous world. That is an anxiety provoking notion for most people. Not me. I enjoy life in the ambiguous. I can accept a certain lack of control of events in my life. I know the only I control is myself. With that in mind, I know I can adapt and thirve in any situation. I am like a cockroach without the six legs and scurrying when the lights are turned on.

I do not know what any of this means, though. I am working through the message of Kelly's life and untimely passing. It is something worth pondering. The only conclusion that quickly becomes apparent is Carpe Diem. Sieze the day, as those are finite and we do not know when our number will be called. Have a good time, all the time because in reality life is too short. Ciao!