We are so fragile in these bodies, aren’t we? We stride upon the earth as gods, while we hurl our ideas like thunderbolts out to the ether, across the globe, into the future.
And yet we are fragile, mere petals, so easily broken off from the stem, taken by the wind, blown far away and then gone.
Today I looked into the eyes of a dear friend, someone I love more than words could ever express. She has experienced a physical trauma, an unexpected bodily injury.
And I ask myself whether this perfect being, this delightful creator of ideas, she of the quicksilver mind and spirit, whose very name means wisdom, could actually be subject to something as undignified as an assault upon her body.
It seems somehow wrong, indefensible, that human souls, beings of air and light, who can reach so high, soar to the heavens and beyond upon wings of pure thought, could be held hostage by these ragtag bodies, these fragile bags of bones.
And so today I dedicate this discussion to the mind and spirit of my friend, to her precious existence, and to the fire within those eyes. I celebrate that fire even more for knowing that such an infinitely bright flame is, incongruously, at the mercy of a insensate physical world.
i’m sorry to hear that your friend is suffering. i hope she is not in pain.
I think this is the core of religious feeling– the conviction that it is impossible for something as infinite in potential and capability as the mind to cease to exist because of something as trivial as a microbe or a car accident.