the knife-edge and the circle

My mate's new baby boy.

The knife-edge and the circle. The knife-edge: we're alive then we could be dead at any time entering into what seems so much to be a final and dark unknowable unknown. The circle: with every person passing there is at least another to replace the passing.

Why do I struggle to suspend my disbelief that I must cease to be? A question, I think, that all humanity must wrestle and come to terms with in some form or another. As a person of faith, I would contend that this is equally the case for people of faith in one religion or another. Very practically, we can't be around to know what it's like to be dead - this makes sense insofar as we seek to view it from our current 'state', this state of life, the only state we can know without 'transferring' to another even if (notwithstanding the large assumptions just made through the introduction of the terms 'state' and 'transferring'. Here I take 'state' simply to connote that there has to be a distinction between life and death, nothing else.) we will know what it's like to exist (in some form) in a non-physically-alive-as-we-know-it-state, from that state not from out current one. This is a factor I detect which contributes to our struggle to suspend our disbelief.

Further, it is this factor that makes sense of death as an unknowable unknown. It is in this light I'd contend we have to accept this unanswerable struggle and question, that we cannot suspend our disbelief. So rather, it must be a question of how we are to deal with/cope with/face/manage our lack of belief and it is in this that I feel we face the prospect of our ceasing to be with a level mind.

Fragility. We are fragile, which brings us back to the knife-edge and the circle. Although our very life is so fragile and subject to so many possible perceived 'risks' (about which the media are excellent exaggerating) this very fragility can enable everyday to be approached and valued and made the most of as it should. Through our fragility we can enter into a fullness of life as we value every day, not missing any opportunity and see the beauty that is always present around us, in nature, in people, in the arts, in the smallest details and in the most comprehensive ideas. This is a liberating fragility, not a tyrannical and pessimistic 'I might die tomorrow so had better make the most of today' fragility. We come to value that there can be strength in and through our weaknesses and find beauty in unexpected places.

Beauty in the midst of and as well as and in spite of the mutilation in our world...now that's a hopeful prospect.