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Worzels World - The Acceptance of Being

 

Here we all are. One way or another, and one perception or another, we all exist. If you’re reading this then you exist simultaneously with me and around 7.4 billion others.

The first irrefutable truism about life is that we are. We exist. French philosopher Rene Descartes summarises his proof for existence with the famous quote: ‘I think therefore I am.’ Personally I am not prepared to justify my existence this way. I am not always thinking but even then I is. I am unable to support Mr Descartes on this one and tend rather to the opinion that ‘I feel therefore I suppose I must be‘. Pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow are for me more ready proofs of life than thinking. 

Quitting the job of living has become disproportionately popular in modern times. Police report a 50 per cent increase in suicide related call outs in the last five years. Some individuals are so despairing of life that they intentionally harness the laws of gravity, chemistry, biology or ballistics to extinguish it in the belief, possibly mistaken, that they will bring and end to consciousness. This has yet to be proved, and as Shakespeare’s Hamlet mused, ‘Who knows what dreams may come in the sleep of death?’ The ending of life is in direct contradiction to what we are here to do. We are here to learn to accept what is, and the first thing we must accept is being.

Personally I’m glad to be here. Scientists who have nothing better to do than work out probabilities have determined that the chances of life occurring at all are so small as to make life in the universe as we know it so highly improbable as to render it impossible. Yet for better or worse, and improbable as it all is, here we are. I freely admit I had no choice in the matter. But science doesn’t have all the answers. Sometimes it doesn’t even seem to ask the right questions. According to contemporary science the bumblebee should not be able to fly. Thankfully bumblebees have no knowledge of, nor put any faith in, contemporary science and not realising that they cannot fly manage it well enough. I am glad this is so as the sight of vast numbers of bumblebees walking from flower to flower would be very sad indeed.

We can conclude that no individual is responsible for his or her own existence. This begs the obvious question, is it our life anyway? Do we have any right to take away what is not ours to begin with? If God, nature, providence, parents or some strange collaboration between the lot hadn’t manufactured it, our lives simply would not be. It is not as if we asked for it, earned it, or indeed played even the slightest part in bringing it about so what makes so many think the life they enjoy or otherwise is theirs? I hear it all the time, ‘It’s my life and I’ll do what I want with it’. Well sorry but you are wrong. Opinion on the hows, whys, wherefores, whos and whens differs markedly from person to person. The one thing though upon which all must agree is that we didn’t get up one morning and make ourselves. There are some that don't even make their beds. 

There are those who believe we were fashioned by a loving, beneficent creator God. Others subscribe to the theory that we are the result of the random interaction of cosmic forces in a vast unfathomable universe, or universes. But science, philosophy and religion all concur that one way or another ‘we are’. The disagreements begin when we try and decide what should be done about it. I would contend that before we begin arguing about the finer points we must first accept that we are.

Likewise (suicide excepted) the chances are against anyone having much say about where and when it will end. And the chances are that whenever death calls for you it will be at an inconvenient time. There are plenty of examples of those who don’t smoke, exercise regularly, and eat the right food only to be cut down in their prime by accident, aneurysm or a stray virulent virus.

On closer scrutiny we are forced to concede that we have little control over the portion between birth and death either. The very best that we can manage is to behave honourably in the face of what Shakespeare described as ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. At the last we must admit the truth that our lives are not our own, we are not in control, life here on earth cannot last. Seeing the obvious is an important step towards accepting that which quite plainly is. Without this we cannot come to terms with or be at peace about this life that we have been freely given. Once we acknowledge these self-evident truths we can take the first step towards the acceptance of being.

 Feedback? Email prof_worzel@hotmail.com

Science, philosophy and religion all concur that one way or another ‘we are’. The disagreements begin when we try and decide what should be done about it.

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