In high school science, toasting bread is a common example of a chemical change which, in general, cannot be reversed. Once toasted, the toast cannot be un-toasted.
The subtle (and perhaps unintended) message for many students is that some things have an end point. The toast will never be bread again, just as an adult will never become a child. The accuracy of this belief is very reliant on dividing reality into separate entities.
For example, the toast may eventually break down into crumbs and return to the soil as mulch. That mulch has the potential to be used to fertilize a new wheat plant. The wheat could then be processed into bread again. On a micro-scale, these are two separate breads in two separate timelines. On a macro-scale they are a continuous flow of inorganic and organic compounds.
Since it formed, the Earth, barring extraterrestrial impacts, has continuously transformed matter in a similar way.
While it may be convenient for us to say that there are clear dividing points of existence, these statements are just like the lines that we draw on our maps. They are created for convenience and do not function as mirrors of existence.
For any process, it is language that defines the end point, not reality. To assume an ending, we must divide and subtract the ecological web of reality into a series of discrete words. Our main method of interpretation for our existence is as a series of events that begin, end and begin again.
This blog post may have a first and last word, but it did not spontaneously burst into existence when you loaded the page. In fact, the history of the first word can be drawn back uninterrupted for thousands of years at the very least. This writer did not create the feelings, forms and words that make this post identifiable. No creation exists in its own space-time vacuum.
The last word will never signify an ending. It will affect anyone who reads it. By the very virtue of reading, the information is absorbed. If it is not read, then it remains as mathematical data, adding value to some part of the universe. The very process of its existence is the transference of energy. The words and thoughts are formed through diverting biological energy into electrical and potential energy. The process of energy is constantly transferring, never being created or destroyed.
In our culture, but not in all cultures, we are obsessive over endings. We want to know the point where suffering ends, or perhaps the point where adolescence ends.
Nothing ever ends. Consider any relationship that you have had. If we view every impact that it has had on us, we would be foolish to say that it could ever leave us. Whether that person remains as a memory, a mannerism or an idea, they continue to exist perpetually. If you remember, or have forgotten your first kiss, each subsequent kiss takes some form of inspiration from that point. If it was bad, then you move your lips in rebellion, if it was spectacular then you emulate it. That first kiss lives as a thesis or antithesis, every time your lips embrace another again.
Even if we are to shed any ownership that a partner once had over our ideas, the birth of new and subsequent behaviors has grown in their fertilizer.
We are mere transit points for grand and nightmarish realities. It would be of paramount arrogance to assume that we are the flowering bud of history, more likely we are another absurd growth of a timeless organism.
The timeless organism is constantly cycling through matter and consciousness on this spinning rock spaceship. Crawling along points of history like a vast tree of roots and branches. This ‘tree of life’ transfers energy continuously across the generations. If we look for the discrete points, we might notice extinctions or deaths (another one of our favorite end points). But if we step back and look at the tree of life as a living organism in of itself, then at these supposed ends we also see beginnings too. On a macro scale, it becomes more and more difficult to see discrete separation of biological life.
The macro-scale continuous flow of life does not just apply to dinosaurs and ferns, it also applies to our lives. Yet, it is wholly dismissed. It is dismissed because it is convenient for our culture to separate our lives into discrete individuals. This benefits greed, suffering and loneliness. It draws an invisible line between each of us, where there the impacts of our behavior are seen as individual and not collective.
It is difficult to summarize what is essentially billions of interactions that build on and feed off our individual development. However, let us consider an award ceremony. Someone stands up and thanks the team that brought them to this point, their parents and their loved ones. Even the greatest of personal struggles are supported by our external environment. There is the person who delivers your food to the supermarket, the person that’s causing you pain and the person that believes in your idea.
Put simply by a friend last night, to view ones life as a nucleus with everyone else spinning around you as complimentary electrons is completely invalid. These people are not spinning around your greater force, but are a continuous wave of energy that is as equal and as important as you in constructing reality. You do not begin at birth and end at your outer layer of skin. You are a struggle of nature and will return to nature.
It must be said that even if we are intellectually aware of the constant flow of reality, we are currently confined to a mentality of separation. One may know, but not experience a connection to each and every part of the planet. Perhaps it could be likened to meeting a biological parent who left you at birth. There is a connection there, but you haven’t felt it and therefore deny it.
Those who experience lifelong PTSD and deep seated trauma can attest that relationships to events, locations or people continue to exist far from their conception. If we can comprehend that a single horrific act can continue to exist as an emotion or memory, then we have partly recognised the artificiality of an end point.
There are undoubted practical benefits of defining an end point. A milestone gives people something to look forward to. It is also a great comfort to believe that some things will never happen again. There are also many that believe breaking up challenging and lengthy activities, such as a university degree, into smaller portions makes it more emotionally manageable. Whilst these might work for many, it is still only the application of language that defines these end points.
The supposed ‘end’ has come many times in history. Many empires, relationships and structures have fallen into memory. Yet to us, we mostly feel that we are at the beginning of something. Ending remains completely and utterly subjective. We might feel that life has just begun, or that it is coming to an end. However, the end of one is the beginning of another and so on and so on. Ends and beginnings exist only in the realm of language.
In this particular moment, if you made it this far, the end of these words are the beginning of something else. A transference of energy worming its way into your mind. Thus a continuous line of energy seeds itself again. To even comprehend this transference, a small lifetime of knowledge and experience is necessary.
When we stop justifying separation, we open our mind to the possibility and reality that we are indeed “a part of something”. We are not at the beginning or ending, but gliding along the continuum.
Magogy 