The Burial

Do not consider the version of you, that you are today, to be the best version of you that there ever will be. This presupposes arrogance, or a reluctance to learn, to improve. Stagnant and immovable, unlike anything else in this flowing universe. Which is a sign of the ignorant, and the boring. The version of you, that you are now, is not some post-best version of you. Even if you’ve been through times of greatness, or succession of success, and that comes to an end, do not then assume that something new will not come along again, or that you’ve played your part and can wait by the sidelines until the curtain closes. There is no stopping, there is no end, simply a change in the game, or in the rules that you play by. This feeling of lost, or ending, is a feeling we often get at the end of a long venture, such as a business venture, or maybe even the end of a period of formal education, such as school or university.

It’s at times like this we must most remember; the road is a long and arduous one – with friends and people you’ll meet at the start, while others you’ll meet at the end. Some will stay with you throughout, and some will part somewhere along the way. Some will carry you for a portion of time, as your feet tire against the persistent gravel, and there are others you will carry for some time too. If you’re lucky, you’ll smile and laugh as you carry or be carried, in the form of a piggy back. Sometimes it’s more that you are carried or that you carry, by the back and by the back of the knee, as you rest against their chest, or as they rest against yours.

Sometimes eyelids will be closed, shielding tender eyes from the searing light of the sun, or the unforgiving reminder of the vastness of the universe in the form of twinkling stars. Sometimes they will remain closed for longer than they should, for fear of all that  they’ll see. Or if you’re feeling lonely; for fear of whom you will not see, around you, when you need them most. Those whom your crave, to keep you warm amidst frosty nights.

Sometimes you will smile; and lie. Inside you curl up your toes underneath your bottom, and hold on tight to your shins as you fear the coming storm, in whatever form it chooses to manifest itself – and yet your outward projection is one of confidence, a frame that can withstand all the weather that can be thrown at it. When in reality, you are as sturdy, as Autumn leaves.

This is known as bravery, being the only one that knows that you are afraid.

But never let it be forgotten, that you do not have to be brave, to be good. You can be honest. You can be kind. And after you have been consumed by whatever life has become for you, and thrown at you, you must remember you can revive yourself or be revived with the support of others, and you can be brave again. Even if only a time, until you cannot be brave any longer. We are what we do consistently; not what we have done once before. Greatness therefore, is a habit. Not an achievement.

So you have not been great, and guided; and now you are lost, and mediocre. The road is simply not without its speed bumps. Its speed limits. It matters not that you slow, just that you do not stop. You are great, and you will be great, because of what you continually strive to do. It is okay to fail. It is not okay, not to try.

Do not long for a version of you that has passed. Rather, ensure their return, and eventually safeguard that they are improved upon, and no longer the standard by which your own personal greatness is based upon. Ensure the return is relentless, and without mercy. If the world is a fire, ensure you are a storm. Whatever life throws at you, as unrelenting as it is, remember that you are unyielding, and more ferocious than it can ever hope to be.

Do not find yourself giving up early, due to wearing parts and exhaustion; suppressing your dreams and ambitions off to one-side and pretending that you can gleeful accepted mediocrity, when in fact you have merely given into it. For all you will accomplish, is not realism – but an early death. One where you die, at twenty five – and are buried much later in life.

There is no point in giving in. There is no emergency exit. For not even the end of the road, can be the end. There has never been an end. Only a change of the game, or the rules by which you play.

Advertisement

A Healthy Body

Look after your body.

Remember that the saying, “A healthy body, a healthy mind.” is not just a catchy saying. Rather, your mind – as abstract as it feels – IS maintained by your body. In fact, your mind as beautiful and intrinsic as it is, is made up of a series of connections, that determine and create chemical reactions which in turn allow you to feel and think and control your body in turn.

It’s cyclical. Meaning if your mind cannot be properly maintained, because your body has been poorly looked after – you will think bad thoughts, and make more bad decisions, and feel bad, and so your body too will decay, and slowly but surely this cyclical process will take a devastating toll on your overall well being, and lead you to places of sadness and negativity.

A treat – foods that taste good but offer little sustenance or nutritional value – is a shortcut to happiness. But shortcuts often lead to long delays. If you find yourself using these shortcuts too often, you will eventually build up your backlog and it will hit you hard. Hard in the form of a dependence on those shortcuts, because your body can no longer make the chemicals it makes naturally in a fit and healthy body – because it does not have the nutrition and the vitamins to do so.

So while decadent treats certainly are such – remember that often they are a treat for the tongue alone. They do not generally account for the nutrients and energy that your body needs. Don’t eat fruit just because you’re told to – eat it because it’s good for you. Eat your vegetables, and enjoy them, knowing that you are fuelling your body to a brighter tomorrow. You are boosting your immune system, and giving your body the excitement it needs to do new things, create new ideas and new works of great.

You do not want to be out of breath walking up some stairs, because your body is struggling to move itself and convert chemical energy to kinetic energy, because it has not properly been topped up.

With no energy, you cannot even embark on the adventures that you so desire, for a wonderful life.

Equally, prepare your body for those adventures. Even the adventure of daily life. By improving your cardio, you will ensure that should you need bursts of energy, you can do so – because your body has learned to function more productively. When the air sacs in your lungs can perform effectively, they ensure your body can respire aerobically, meaning your blood is oxygenated and can carry oxygen to your muscles that require it so they can perform optimally.

Your body will also, at some point need to bear a heavy load of some sort. Perhaps you will carry a dog down a hillside, after a hot and tiring day. Or perhaps your children in your arms, up to bed.

Then, it behoves you to ensure your muscles are ready for this task. The way your muscles work, is that they can only grow in size, once they have been proved to not be strong enough to handle the current load. So you must work out your muscles, lift heavy objects and lift them repeatedly, until your muscles tear (slightly – not as in an injury) and then they must repair themselves stronger so that they know not to be broken by that same activity again. Then you must lift heavier objects, let them tear, so they grow bigger to not be broken again by that activity, and so on.

Run far; lift heavy and repeatedly; and eat healthily; and you will prepare your body in such a way, that it can live it’s best life naturally.

It is as simple as that. To be kind to yourself; you must be kind to your body.

A New Home

A blank canvas. With the material equivalent spread on new walls all around you,  you are boundless. You could write, you could paint, you could be whatever you want to be within these walls. They are untouched – and while they wait for your kinetic imprint, the footprint of life, they are potential.

Ahead of you, you see what your life could be, at your time within these corners. You see the smiles and the laughter, of the ones that you love as they gather round where your dining table will be, when you’ve managed to obtain it. You’ll place your fingers against the walls, and trace where picture frames of friends and family with smiling faces, will hang. You’ll walk around and imagine your legs bent at the knee, as you lay in comfort with your arm around the one you love, as you remember why on idle Sundays you cherish having your person to do nothing with.

As you stand with a smile, baked across your face, for a brief moment in vanishes, as you think of the places you’ve left behind to get here. All the places you’ve been, and all the people you were, at all the points in your life. You’ll think of the good times you had, and feel a sincere moment of melancholy, only because you are so thankful to have those memories in your head, and sad that they are in the past.

And then you remember; the person you are now. And as the smile reappears, you stand in awe of the future ahead of you. And the future you’s ahead of you.

How times you’ll never forget; have yet to happen. How your dreams will slowly metamorphose into memories, and in turn spawn new dreams and ambitions you will work towards. You realise the road does not have an end, but you will instead consistently be amazed by the happiness you will achieve.

A new home is the epitome of potential. It is the foundation, by which you will build yourself, and the life of the best you that has yet to come.

So, artist, now that you stand before your canvas, what will you paint?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if everything worked out?

Irrespective of the grandiose nature, and concepts that surround life and ontology; wouldn’t it just be wonderful if all the things we’ve dreamed in our heads, within reason, came to fruition. The simple things.

To wake up every morning, and have my first sight be the glow of your face. Where the first words to stretch my voice will always be “Good morning.”,  because I truly know it will be.

To look on the couch, and watch you read your book – with your toes wrapped in a winter blanket, by a fire that heats the fur on the back of our dog that we’ll have.  To see your hair fall over your glasses, and watch you, mesmerised, slowly pull the hair back behind your ear. To watch in slowed time, your eyes meet mine, and remember evermore; how lucky we are.

To sit in a house we call our home, with gentle anticipation of loving friends who’ll visit us the day after, and remind us why we all stay in touch. Where smile and laughter is not uncommon. Where bellies are full, and hearts are warm.

Where ambitions are always on the horizon, but not to fill some void – only to drive us towards tomorrow, where we can spend another day together.

And as the light dims, on each new day, we’ll huddle together for warmth; one that we can only find, in the curve of one another.

As a smile dawns upon my face, and I drift off to sleep – there is no doubt in my mind, that there will only be one thought that fills my heart;

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

ANGER

Anger. It’s very difficult to control this emotion. If any readers ever succeed in controlling it in its entirety, tell me how.

You can’t stand a person. You can’t stand an ideal or a thought. It’s so inherently wrong or immoral to you and yet it keeps happening, and the persons or persons responsible for it aren’t backing down, they aren’t apologising – in fact they’re aggravating you. Maybe they’re getting away with it, and you find that unfair. They’re pushing your buttons, intentionally, and you’re exponentially becoming more frustrated because you can’t solve it. You’re losing. Maybe someone whom you care for deeply or have an intense respect for is intentionally letting you down, disappointing you, or hurting you, and despite the fact you normally love or care for them – right now you cannot think of any of it, for the intense red mist that has descended upon you.

It’s a very primal emotion; anger. It’s not very complex, it just is. A lot like love, or fear. You are angry, because you are.

But as a relatively rational human being, you will most likely try to control it, in some way or another. Ineffectively count to ten – or perhaps you leave the room to focus your mind elsewhere.

Then, most likely, still as the rational human being you are, you will probably feel one more emotion blind-sight you out of nowhere, and attempt to steal your anger’s limelight. You’ll feel guilt. Guilty that you were unable to control yourself, and that your emotions instead controlled you. But the truth is you have little more to do with your emotions, than you do with your need to breathe in air.

Of course, it is important you learn how to handle, and express anger – but it is not important that you feel it. You should not feel guilty about feeling it, perhaps only about what you then do with it. If you are angry and you punch a wall – this is a relatively stupid thing to do, because you’re only giving yourself or another person a separate problem to solve. You’re not fixing yours.

However, if you are angry, and you sit and be angry; reflect perhaps – this is not so terrible. It’s not so terrible, because you’re going to feel it – so you may as well be constructive about it. You may as well come to terms with the fact, that as our thoughts and actions are the only thing in this life, that we can control – we now have a responsibility to think our thoughts through, and determine an appropriate action or outlet for them.

Most importantly; understand that you cannot move on, you cannot become better and feel better until you actively let the anger go. Any pain or hurt you’ve been caused, any build up rage that someone has instilled upon you, will not dissipate until you have given it permission to do so. One cannot negotiate effectively, in anger.

Do not allow serious discussions to occur, until you are no longer emotionally compromised. And while it’s annoying, and irritating, having to wait – because you may not have been ready to wait… you must. You must wait it out, until you can either forgive the person, until you can forget about the issue, or if you feel this person may anger you consistently and legitimately to an extreme degree so often that they no longer matter in the same way to you as they once did, leave them. Remove toxicity from your life.

But what you must not do – is decide any of these things, while you are not rational. And if you are emotionally compromised – you are not thinking rationally.

Take your time. Be angry. Forgive yourself. Direct the flow of it productively. And most importantly, do not feel guilty for the sake of feeling guilty. But understand, for you to grow, and for the situation to resolve itself in any way, you must let go of it, for now it only hurts you.

“Holding onto anger is like drinking a poison, and expecting the other person to die.”

Everything is temporary. So let anger pass, and do not let it consume you any longer than it has. Control the outlet of your emotions, so that they do not control you.

There Isn’t Enough Time With You

There was a time when as the stars passed by in the night outside my window, I would stare out at them with hopeful eyes. They were most beautiful thing I had ever seen. So full of potential, so full of life, so grandiose and yet so small in comparison to the black sky. I saw my future in them, every star a new possibility and awed at their very presence. And they filled my heart, with such great wonder.

---

Isn’t it amazing that we share the same time as every other person on this planet Earth, and yet when we are together, each passing moment seems to move so unforgivably faster.

How ironic it is, that no matter how much time I get with you, each second still seems to shorten its length, and that the time I do get vanishes, more fleeting than he last. The more I love you, the more that time seems to slip away from me without my permission. And as I love you more, each and every day. And each and every day I come to realise, more so than before, that no matter how much time I get with you, it will never be enough.

How remarkable it is, that mundane tasks are now no longer taxing. As I make coffee in the morning; if it is for myself, my feet scuff along the carpet and my eyes roll around my head uncouthly. I loosely lift the kettle and the weight of it clashes against my mug. I rub my eyes and shield them from the light of day, as I consider returning to bed instead, and snoozing until I no longer can.

But when I make coffee for you, when I have the pleasure – my heels lift off of the floor as I walk to the kitchen. I select ground of coffee that look the freshest, I stir for longer than usual, to make sure the sugar that you like does not settle at the bottom of the mug that I bought you. I clean the rim with a dishtowel, to ensure it looks as good as I hope it tastes and then I carry it slowly, and I bring it to you with a smile on my face.

I will never tire, not for one day, at the look you give me when I enter the room. The way your resting body seems to come to life, and your eyes meet mine. The way your body rises, with new air, and the way you seem to brighten up the room with every breath. That smile that you give me… that beautiful smile that appears from nowhere. It renders me vulnerable every time.

As the day begins to pass with you, never once is there a moment when I am not completely and utterly in love.

Never before, could I imagined that a human so beautiful, so thoughtful, so kind, and so wonderful could exist in this world, let alone choose to spend their time with me. Never before, could I have thought someone could be so delicate and fragile, and yet so strong and fierce all at once. So caring, so clever, and so determined as you are. Never before could I have dreamed, that a room could be brightened, and that the grey of colours could dissipate into the background, just by your very presence. You bring about the sun to shine the smiles of faces. You are the warmth, through the night.

I could watch the hair fall over the corner of your glasses a thousand times, and still catch my jaw in awe of falling strands. I would watch as your curled fingers grasp around them, and pull them back into place behind your left ear. If I’m very lucky, you’ll smile at me as you do it. And just as in the morning, it will take me by surprise. Suddenly I’m smiling too; although I think I have been for a while and not realised it until now.

At night you sit on the couch with a blanket cradling your toes. Your legs are folded underneath you, and if a book is not in front of your eyes then you hand rests gently against your chin as you “watch” something on TV. Really, we’re both just trying not to stare at one another. Still, I play the game. I’ll watch random iridescent images flash in the iris of your eyes. A slightly skewed version of those images on your eyes reflects onto your glasses, dancing. You close your eyes. Slowly, your eye lashes begin to open, and you look at me.

I still melt. Every time. If I’m lucky, you’ll give in and look at me first. You’ll shake your head – same as I do. We’re laughing; we’re smiling. Because still it is unbelievable a concept to us, that we love each other as much as we do.

---

There was a time when as the stars passed by in the night outside my window, I would stare out at them with hopeful eyes. They were most beautiful thing I had ever seen. So full of potential, so full of life, so grandiose and yet so small in comparison to the black sky. I saw my future in them, every star a new possibility and awed at their very presence. And they filled my heart, with such great wonder.

But that was a time.  Now, as I walk to bed, I do not stare up at the sky, and the splendour of the great beyond outside my window. I close the curtains; I don’t need them anymore.

I lie in bed, and struggle to stay awake for as long as I can; for the dreams I’ll have, could be no comparison to the reality of you. My eyes begin to falter, and I stare at your face as they do. I wish for just one more day; so that I can spend it with you.

And as sleep comes over upon me, I do not miss those days when I gazed out at the sky. For I no longer see my future in the stars, but instead I see them in you.

Hurt

If you think you are irreparably hurt; remember that at some point, you have lied to your mother.

You have broken the heart; of the person who formed yours, and stood steadfast staring into eyes that love you, and told lies and untruths. And as she watched you, wrapped in clothes that she worked so hard to put you in, she was torn and crying inside. All the while she had to remain resilient and strong, for little did you know that you were not brave, cunning, and clever – but instead small, weak, and deceitful. How very childish, that you cherished your pride in that moment, more than you did unconditional love.

How very foolish that would be? – If you were to repeat that again. Wouldn’t it be foolish?

---

To let pride, and pity take precedence over someone, or a group of people even, whom love you unconditionally? To let such a small thing, as being right be worth the hurt you may cause?

It does not always matter that you are right. Many men and women whom have lived for pride, the knowledge of being right, and stubbornness have done so for a lifetime – and in return they have died sad and alone. And realised that being right, was not so worth it after all. That being right, or proving it, never did hold any value, and the hurt it caused to others only served to worsen their life, and yours. And the horrible, soul destroying fact of that scenario – is that if you were to do the same; if you were to live in such a manner, and realise only on your deathbed, that it was all not worth it at all, and that you are scared, having driven everyone who may care for you and love you – that you lived a life no where near as happy as the one you could have, you will then, after some time realise a second thing.

The second thing you will realise, is that you cannot undo it. There is no going back, and there is no time to fix it. You will slowly fall asleep into darkness, with tears in your eyes, and no one around you who truly loves you, as you turned your partner away and any children you had, and you will realise it was all not worth it. It was all not worth it, and you cannot change. You will die, knowing you are bitter. You will die, knowing you will be forgotten.

Think proactively. Do not build that future for yourself. Do not be the person now, that the you in the future will regret. If someone matters to you, let them know. And show them partly through words, but mostly through action, that they matter more to you, than pride. Do not lie, do not act selfishly, do not deceive, and do not degrade. They are worth more than that, and so are you.

We all make mistakes. We all act hastily. Rashly. Out of anger or pain. And you are human, so even the best will do this. But be sure to minimise it. And most importantly, if you do it, be sorry for it. Show that through changed behaviour, you will not repeat the same mistakes. Slowly you will build a life where pride is not a concept you hold important.

Understand that hurt to a loved one, intentional or otherwise, is such an abhorrent concept – you should not aspire to do it – especially for the boring sake of “winning”.

Show this to others. To loved ones, or otherwise. Spread it around. Hope it rubs off on them, and that next time they go to do something hurtful in the name of pride, they will take a moment and think of this. Your loved ones and theirs are worth more, than ego.

Discussion: Language, without barometer

Suppose that in ten million years, humanity has been long wiped off the face of the planet. Some life still remains, but it has regressed to a more primitive state, due to some cataclysmic event, caused by our own iniquity, or some element of chance.
No animal that could understand the basics of calculus has existed on the rock called Earth for a very long time.

When one day, entirely by chance, our no longer blue planet is discovered, by some nomadic civilisation, who managed to achieve travel into the stars without using that same technology to blow each themselves up. In the ruins alone, under the assumption that concrete has eroded into mere particles that blew in the wind, and pages from books lost their ink; this civilisation would be able to piece together very little of what we were. Even if somehow some homestead had managed to endure the withering of time – if it had been cocooned in a blanket of ice, for instance; where would you even begin to understand what objects were?

A slab of metal and glass filled with silicon lines, in the corner of a room, where every piece of furniture is pointed at it. Knives and forks on the dinner table, for fighting no doubt. Window frames on the second floor, because we could jump so high, and often used that for quick access. Cloth in wooden containers, powdered energy in glass jars, animal carcasses in large white frozen boxes. It would be a frightening world of guesswork without a basis by which to guess. Everyone has had that experience of trying to tell a story, that was funny at the time, but after telling it out loud you find the other person does not find it so. Think of this, except not only do you not speak the same language, but you share no history, no culture, no prospects, no allegiances, and perhaps not even the same galaxy.

Now let’s suggest that humanity as a collective decides that the idea of a future civilisation discovering our remains and not being able to fabricate who we were is just too harsh a thought to bare. So they decide to devise a solution to this, or at least to devise a means in which to help these future nomads. And as a collective, they have decided to accept applications from anyone on the planet, and accept any ideas anyone on the planet may have on how best to communicate with the future visitors.

The problem then becomes the focus of this article: How do you communicate with these visitors? How do you construct a language, without barometer? In our own world, translations of works are inherently different to the language in which they were originally written, mainly because there is no word which translates over 100% – but at least we have something by which we can vaguely relate it to. But with an alien visitor -you don’t even have a set of words, objects, animals, or plants, by which you could guarantee you share. Not only this, but you cannot even predict the senses this alien might use to perceive the world around them. It is not enough to suggest you could communicate in a language that is a concatenation of a number of languages that are most frequently used or most expressive; because you cannot guarantee this creature has ears. Or perhaps they do but do not hear in the same frequency as we do. Perhaps you wish to communicate in symbols? – Well it has taken us thousands of years to build up semiotics to the point we can look at something and register to which category it belongs to at a glance, and even now most humans struggle with all of them, they differ in time and they differ from culture to culture. Equally, as before, the visiting nomads may not have eyes. Or if they do, maybe they do not see colour in the same range that we do. Lets say that they do have eyes – well what do they even register as a note? Say they looked at English at a glance, they could interpret the white space between the letters as the symbols rather than the letters themselves.

The possibilities are near endless for interpretation. This would be fair to say of something that came from our planet, or even our galaxy. But this could be a visitor that we may not even recognise as intelligent life, and yet regardless, it is. So much so that it had travelled through the stars to find us.

Furthermore then, we have an obligation to protect intelligent life as best as we can. To avoid any kind of pain and anguish where we can. If something can intelligent understand the universe and perceive its own consciousness, it must be our responsibility to ensure it.
It is important then to have this discussion – say we are aware of what brought about our destruction. It is our obligation then, to warn these visitors of the dangers we could not avoid. Perhaps areas of contamination, physical or otherwise, should be left in the past and certain technologies either avoided or proceeded with caution. The question being, how do we do this?

How would you communicate to something that may not even perceive the world in the same way that you do? And on a more personal note… Would you? Would you personally make an application to share your thoughts on how best to do this?

Arguably our only efforts to communicate without language thus far, is music. For thousands of years, we have communicated celebration, happiness, fear and war to others through music. No lyrics required to communicate exactly how we feel. Perhaps this would be our best bet to begin. Perhaps the sound of children laughing, the rain forest, or the ocean reaching the shoreline. The times at which we as a species were most at peace.
But then, while this may provide an example of our environment – it doesn’t necessarily define who we were or are. When we were good or bad. When we loved, and when we hated.

If we continue on a scientific trend – would we leave behind a hologram of a child as an ark of information, to provide context to who we were? Would this be the most realistic option, to convey our messages of peace in as many images and as many words as we possibly could? Could this child hold out a hand, with the bumps on his hand spelling in braille, and his words echoed in every other language, and Morse code? Would what the child spoke even resonate on any parallel? Should we literally throw sounds and light in some form of pattern, and hope that something sticks? Data dump our history and languages in as many different patterns as possible? Perhaps an AI, that can use everything that we are currently to determine what COULD be encountered in the future? Statistically, this is probably necessary. As much as they would like to earn us, we may need to learn it first, in the form of some machine learning. To discuss topics not only do we not understand yet, but we may never even have encountered in our cosmically short lifespan.

What if we decided that we wanted to communicate, only that which we wanted to communicate. I.e. perhaps we would wish to leave out the horrid parts of our history, or tell much more embellished versions of it in myth, legend, and art rather than the much more hard to swallow science and objectivity. If we were to do that, how could we separate semantics from pragmatism? To say very clearly what is, and not what we meant to say. This applies to our language, and also our visualisation of our culture. Say we built, or painted, or sculpted a grand cathedral, and hid it in some frozen ark – we may try to convey how complex and grandiose we were in our architectural choice – only to find that our visitor friends interpret the use of space as inefficient. They may regard our distinct lack of compactness instead, as a sign we were not intelligent whatsoever. That we were too wasteful. Perhaps then, they would be right.

The questions are endless, and arguably you could discuss for the millions of years we are hypothetically wiped out discussing what we could and should do – if and when we should – why and where we should. In fact, this question, which its infinite possibilities seems to grand a task to bestow upon us, and too great a burden to endure.

But if something is important enough, you must always try. Even if the expected outcome, is failure.

However; the question remains: Would you? And if so, how? How would you begin to construct a language to speak beyond the stars, without barometer?

Go.

What Lies Beyond

As you look into the night sky; and remark on the beauty of the universe in the shape of stars and nebula, you may at some point if given enough time, come to a realisation. These beautiful wonders, that have guided humanity since the dawn of our time, that have inspired poetry and created great works of art; may no longer be there. Light is the fastest thing that we understand. Nothing we perceive is greater than the speed of light. And yet even it, is finite. And the great span of distance from where we are, to where the stars lie beyond, is so great, that it takes finite definable light considerable length of time to reach us, and display to us the grandiosity of the stars, and nebulae, and everything beyond our world.

Potentially, these works of awe may have existed a length of time so greatly long ago, that the stars have not only died – but have dissipated and spread the elements of life into the universe since then. They may have brought about life in other parts of the universe, a life that may be so intelligent they too have used it to guide themselves through the dark, and used it to create light in works of art. How fascinating it is to think, that balls of light, crucibles of elements and life may have in turn brought about more life in new form, in places we cannot even hope to see. They may have inspired entire civilisations worth of culture, in what lies beyond.

Pillars of Creation – A long dead mix of star and nebulae. This is a real image, taken from the Hubble telescope. Courtesy of NASA.GOV

They have done this, and they have done it so long ago, that cultures we may never meet, have already came and went based upon them. Yet still we see their awe. With certainty – stars will come and go – and yet still they inspire long after their implosion. It serves as evidence – that long after something dies – it can still be experienced.

Imagine you are in a room, and you are with one other person, facing them directly, as it would not be uncommon for you to do. You’re talking about something trivial and generally just spending time with someone you enjoy. You may smile and feel so in the moment with someone at that time, which is beautiful and remarkable in every way. But on a scientific level – there is a delay.

There is a delay between what happens for the self, and what the other person will see. There is a delay in sound. Sound travels at the speed of about 345 m/s, meaning that if this was a particularly massive room, a ball room perhaps in some large palace in Germany, that was this distance from one end to the other, if you stood at one end and your companion at the other, then there would be a one second delay between what you said, and when they heard it.

Now, when we actually experience this in reality, talking to our friends in close proximity, this delay is remarkably small. So small in fact, that relatively it is negligible. However, let’s not forget… it is still there. There is a similar delay with light – except that light travels significantly faster than sounds, at about 3 * 10 ^ 8 m/s (30’000’000’000 m/s), meaning that the delay is even more negligible. However, it IS still there.

To reiterate, what this means is that every time you talk to someone. there is a delay in when they say it, and when you see and hear it.

The complexity intensifies however, when our understanding of the universe and technology increase greatly. Let’s suggest that some far away intelligent being can view that conversation you are having with your friend; that they can view it on their version of a telescope which can see unimaginable distances away, and perhaps even translate what you are saying via subtle movements in your mouth and vocals cords, into whatever language they speak, effectively meaning they can see and hear you. The problem is, that if they are doing this millions of light years away from you – by the time they see it, it will have happened a long long time ago. Millions of years ago in fact.

But they are seeing and hearing it right now, to them, and yet you and your friend would have lived and died millions of years before. So how can this be?

Well… actually… this is exactly what’s happening with humanity and the stars. The two examples differ in negligible ways. So why even provide the two examples to say the same thing?

The reason being, it is necessary to humanise the following question; if everything we do is technically in a delay – if everything that we see and perceive is technically a memory – if all of time is relative to the person observing it, and there is no definite point of certainty – when does something, or more specifically someone… die?

If your friend perished in some terrible accident, to you they would be “dead” and naturally you would be very sad about it, and yet at the same time, this intelligent being could be observing them in their now, and viewing some certain events that happened before they were killed off in the third act. So they are dead to you, but not to this other being, who still sees and hears them, millions of years later.

It would seem then, that as the problem continues, the true crux of the issue – is that the general person still views time as an absolute constant, rather than simply constant – to you. In other words, relatively constant. Which is of course is an oxymoron.

What lies beyond, is not only new worlds, homes, discoveries, people, and cultures, but also the past, present, and future, simultaneously and all at once. It’s all just based on the perspective by which you view it.

Some comfort you can take from this, is that friends and family whom you have lost, some time in the past. No matter how long ago it was, they are not truly gone. Sadly, they are only gone, to you. But they are still smiling, and being happy, and looking at you with adoring eyes, from someone’s point of view, somewhere. Someone, somewhere, may be looking at you both in the past, with wondering eyes, and thinking, “They look happy.” And if some future technology could transport you an unimaginable distance away in an instant ( perhaps some quantum entanglement one day may teleport us ) then you could too, sit and view this person and you, watch each other with those same adoring eyes.

What lies beyond, is the past, future, and present; it’s the now and then; it’s the you and I.

Think of that, as you look into the night sky.