Life
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
It's a poetic term which boils down to 'return from whence you came'. In the book of Genesis, those are the words of God/Yahweh/Jehovah/Whomever to Adam in the explanation that he was made from the dust of the Earth, and when he died, to the dust his body would return. So it occurred to me that this could very well tie into the idea that the first conscious memory is the last conscious memory.
I haven't spoken to any dead dude or dudettes lately, so bear with me. When you hear people talking about near death experiecnes, they generally speak of a light. Many believe it's the light of heaven, of the Pearly Gates, guarded by Jesus' best friend and confidant, St. Peter the Apostle. As an agnostic, I believe it is the light of truth that washes over you just before the complete decimation of your being. Different strokes.
They say that your first memory is between ages 2 and 4. But what if Birth is your first memory, subconsciously wedged in there as 'I am conscious, I am here, I have begun and it is here that I'll end'. Think about it. You're wrenched from the calming truth of the womb, the wamth and moistness that has been all you knew for a matter of nine months and ejected into the harsh world. Someone snips the cord, and you're aware, awake from that hazy, dreaming state from within, and all around is the sudden glare of light. Unless you were born in pitch darkness, there is a perceptible change in your surroundings, and whether or not your eyes are opened or closed, there's this blinding glare that assaults from beyond, the indelible and irrevocable truth of life.
You get used to it.
You move on, you get older.
You forget. Because in a way, that's what we do as people. We take things for granted. We take the very truth of life for granted, to be blessed with some semblance of a cognitive mind. And that's the truth, because we fear death. We fear death because of the idea that afterwards, there is no consciousness, no us. And rightly so.
The light is there at birth, there when you die, from dust you came, to dust you'll return. Don't take it literally, but the bible is full of the samesuch metaphors, and when you start discerning them you can figure out the meaning of life. No master plan. No destiny or fate. Just you, here, now, living, writing history as it comes.
