Life and science and love...

The truth is, there probably isn't a meaning to life.
The truth is that we probably miss the meaning by constantly searching for it.
Truthfully, it's probably all just science, but that doesn't mean it isn't amazing.

I think we're missing the point when we say things like, "There has to be a higher meaning to life. Life can't just be this."

I guess we're referring to our jobs and cleaning and eating and sleeping and watching tv for an hour or two, even though we know it's supposed to be rotting our brains. But, if you look a little deeper into those things, there's meaning all over the place.

I am totally willing to believe that my sublime and earth shattering love for my children is the result of the fact that I have been duped by biology. In the first months, when I was developing this feirce love and protectiveness, my babies certainly weren't actively doing anything to merit my swooning. They made me fat and sore, kept me up at night, stressed me out to a point where I felt like I was losing my mind. They took leisure away from me, made me pee my pants occassionally and I fell terribly behind on reading, because of them. They did everything wrong... everything I would never want the object of my affection to do. They, in short, completely tortured me with worrying and responsibility. And I love them with a truth so big that it swallows up the world.

It's no cooincidence that we respond so strongly to tiny things. Especially tiny things with big heads and even bigger eyes. It's all just biology, isn't it? And biology is absolutely wonderous.

I find meaning in the blinking of their little eyelashes.
I feel a higher purpose when I nestle them against me.
My love for them might be science, but that doesn't make it any less real or viable.

Even in a stripped down state, in the whatever every day stuff of life, there is a lot to be impressed with. Plants grow, and sometimes they grow big enough that they put out the sun. Also, the sun exists. We're made of skin and blood and gore, and we're animated! We walk around! We perceive! We have language, and with language we have learned not only to communicate, but to create works of art. And what is music? or laughter? or crying? Why do we respond the ways we do? Something happens to trigger a feeling we've come to know as "sadness" and all this water wells up inside of us and comes pouring out of our eyes. We just accept that. It's crying, but it's baffling and amazing a little bit, too, isn't it?

We're always looking for the magic beyond everything that we are and do, but there's so much magic inside everything we are and do. We don't need a hero to keep us safe and run our lives and make sense of science. We live like God every day.



My backyard on a warm day in winter


Stack of books


33 weeks pregnant with Scout