Melancholy

I’m in a melancholy mood today. I don’t know why, but I just am. Sometimes when I get in these types of moods I either look for changes I need to make to my life to get me out of the mood, or else I start waxing philosophical. Today it is more of the philosophical. What defines life and consciousness? I’m not going to claim to answer that here in my post, but I had some observations and they seem quite puzzling to me.

The human body is made up of cells. This in and of itself isn’t that surprising, but each of those cells can have a life outside my body. They can harvest cells and grow them if the conditions are right and they are perfectly happy not being a part of me. This makes me ponder existence. Think about this. You are made of millions of living organisms. They all have formed a society inside which they act. This society, you, has a separate consciousness from all the parts, i..e. cells. Why is that? What part of you is different than the living parts that make up you? It’s almost enough to really freak you out when you think it through. It sort of goes back to the whole abortion debate, which I am not going there. So you that is you has a different life then the cells that make up you. How did they decide one day to make multi-celled organisms in the first place? Now if you follow the evolutionary route basically one cell decided to split into two, or two cells got together to cohabit, and they found it worked better and the beat goes on. If you take the religious note then God had a hand in getting the guys together, whether in the initial creation, or along an evolutionary path that God started up. Once again, when did the grouping of cells take on characteristics where the sum of the whole developed a different level on consciousness then the parts? If you want to give this part of us that is us a name, and I will call it spirit for the lack of something better, does that mean dogs and cats, fish and birds, that they all have sprit of one sort or another? That thought troubles me, but of course the same can be asked of plants. Just because they can not let their feelings be known they have a complexity that could have this nebulous spirit attached. It makes one wonder about your place in the whole stream of things.

I ask these questions as I look back at my daughter’s life. She died a few years ago, but the pain can still be quite strong. Her cells were screwed up. The brain cells that are supposed to migrate to her head didn’t all make it. In fact very few did, and yet she was a vibrant loving caring child for her three years she was with us. So I ask again, what makes us us, and where do we go from here?