Death

Dying is not what we wish. It is heretofore an unpleasant prospect to the body, which can be delayed until this potentially changes, and if events allow. But all in all, living beings are born, grow, and die, are born, grow, and die. It is not scary, as all time is contained in the present anyway. Time is only the succession of relevant events. (Time and story are the same thing. There is also an outside of story, in the present moment.) It is not a necessity: there can be no relevant events, only being. And non-being.

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” Non-being shivering simultaneously with being. Where does this idea come from?

“shivering” might be revealing: is non-being always present to a human thinker because human thought is predicated on a perishable body? So even in the moment of contemplating being, we’re still aware of our death, which gives us a notion of non-being. Notion that we project onto other beings. But really, there is no non-being, just our future, but always potentially imminent, non-being alive. There is no end of the world, just the end of our life.

We can imagine non-being as death, as darkness (opposite of light), emptyness (more difficult already), all notions that are not actually non-being, but projections of our own nothingness (future, always imminent). There is really only being. That I know of…

22:40 Shivering: there is beauty in that, like the leaves of trees ruffling in the night outside my window.

I mean the leaves are like bells at a temple, calling attention to the present shiver.