Tuesday 11th July, 2023
I’m no scientist but I find the concept that our bodies are made up of stardust really fascinating. From what little I understand, the matter that makes up our universe, including us, was all formed billions and billions of years ago by distant stars going supernova. Moreover, the matter within our bodies cannot be destroyed, rather, we are part of a huge cycle of life, when we die our bodies break down and that matter is simply transformed into another form.
So, essentially, the matter that makes your physical body is billions of years old, it doesn’t really belong to you, when you die it will continue the cycle of life, becoming part of the earth that will sustain future generations of humans. It puts a lot of things into perspective, mostly human greed. We scrabble around, fighting for power, fighting to own ‘stuff’ made of atoms that existed long before even our planet existed and will exist long after our deaths, ‘stuff’ that we are all a part of, than no one person can really ‘own.’ All of humanity is one, we are made of the same stuff, existing on the same tiny fragment of rock in the universe that birthed us, the universe that twinkles within us all. We are the universe, we are each other.
What if that goes beyond the physical? What is that substance that makes us human? That makes us, us? What is it that makes these animated aged atoms “me” for a short time? Is it just consciousness? And if so, what really is consciousness? Is it a soul? Is it “energy” is it “God” or perhaps “love” ? I don’t know, but I know it’s ‘something.’ What if that something that I feel deep within me, that makes me more than just a random collection of particles, is the same thing that flows in your veins? Just like the stardust that traveled 13 billion years across a universe to create the whole, connected, human race, perhaps our very souls are all fragments of the same distant star? Or the same being? Or force?
That thing, whatever that thing is, it is you, and me, and Kylie Minogue and Katie Hopkins, and , dare I say it, even Donald Trump. What if it’s also all those who have gone before us, Joan of Arc, Mary Seacole, Cleopatra….. Hitler…? What if we are all one glorious, beautiful, living, breathing, almighty being, scattered throughout history in the souls of all humankind? What if we are all needed, all necessary for wholeness and completeness, every single one of us in all our magnificent diversity?
Would it make a difference to how we view those on the edges of our world? Or how we view our enemy? Would it make any difference to how we share our resources? How we spend our time? How we live?
