Shower Thoughts

The best environment for hosting profound thought is the shower. There’s something about the thick warmth permeating your skin, the way water splatters against the basin as you stare into the white abyss of fiberglass, that provokes ideas to spill out. Tonight isn’t my first stare into life—its brevity, its seeming lack of purpose. But I am drawn to write my thoughts down based on the conclusions discovered while soap and shampoo threaten my eyes.

Somewhere in the near future – between this precise moment and 80 years – I shall die. Whether there is reincarnation or Heaven, my body and spirit shall part ways. Assuming I’m not the last human, the planet will keep spinning—reshaped and battered by us. For others, life will go on, and I will eventually be forgotten entirely. Our sun will die a billion years from now, and with it, “our” earth. By then, humans will have evolved or perished. But that’s not relevant to me. That’s too distant. In the grand scheme, my life is atomic—tiny. My life shall end; my existence will be summed up by the wisps and tails I’ll leave behind physically and virtually. This appropriate video calls them ghosts. What an apt name!

Thinking about death makes me consider beliefs. I was raised Catholic, yet I no longer believe in God—at least, I don’t think I do. I still debate this internally. What I do believe is being a kind, compassionate, and giving person. Boiled down, most religions preach the golden rule: do unto others as you’d like done to you. Am I Catholic? No. Am I a product of its teachings? Absolutely. Sunday School was not my favorite part of the week, but I learned about how people should act. I do my best to be kind.

What happens after our biological vessel succumbs to age or incident? A friend recently reminded me of a simple scientific fact: matter can’t be destroyed, only altered. Our bodies are made of atoms, and so are the electric sparks firing through our brains. Memories and personality are matter too. The matter making up our skin, guts, and bones becomes fuel for the planet. Where does the energy of our mind go? Maybe our atoms scatter, maybe our memories dissolve into static. But if matter can’t be destroyed, maybe nothing truly disappears. In the end, perhaps it floats around us. One day, a tool will be invented to capture and read the memories and personalities of the dead (picture the Ghostbusters’ proton pack).

I’m not frightened of death. I’m just anxious to feel and express everything I can in the seconds of years I have left. Someone should remind me to take chances when I forget this mindset. We sleep ⅓ of our lives away. We work another ⅓. Use the shit out of the last third. 

As my brother and I say: if it ain’t a helluva day, it ain’t fuckin’ worth it!

Two more videos about time that I’ve seen in the past days.

Travel for Huntington’s.

• A man is diagnosed with a rare, incurable disease. He begins to travel.

Scale of Time — This will make you feel tiny.

I’ve written about time before.