Yesterday I stopped by
the neighborhood store
to pick up anchors
from the bottom shelf of aisle four,
to hang some words of wisdom
to remind me
when to go left,
and when to go right.
But alas,
the shelf was empty.
Life continues to drift
in a shoreless sea.
Life is a trajectory, arcing through the vast field of mortality, each moment a point of motion that carries us forward and it is us who create meaning along the way.
Summary: Mortality and gravity are both ever-present forces shaping life’s trajectory. While gravity’s effects are predictable, mortality’s path is uncertain, highlighting life’s fragility. Yet moments of transcendence — spiritual, emotional, or sensory — offer glimpses beyond finitude, connecting us to the infinite. These experiences may serve as our “escape velocity” from mortality’s pull.
Mortality and gravity — whether we realize it or not, the two share similarities.
Consider us and the Earth: within their sphere both gravity and mortality are ever-present. From the moment of birth, mortality exerts a constant pull, steering the trajectory of life toward its inevitable end. Likewise, the Earth’s gravity continually draws us — and everything on its surface — toward its center. If we throw a stone into the air, gravity ensures its path forms a graceful parabola, bringing it back to the ground.
A key difference between the two, however, is that mortality’s effect on the trajectory of life is far less predictable or consistently graceful than the path of a stone. Life’s journey can come to a sudden, unexpected halt, reaching its end abruptly. At other times, for reasons unknown and unpredictable, lives that seem similar at birth follow vastly different paths — some longer, some shorter. Perhaps, just as a stone traces a graceful parabola in the field of gravity, there are trajectories of life within the field of mortality that might also be deemed graceful.
As a conscious species, the awareness of mortality is also an awareness of our finitude. Part of this realization also involves recognizing its opposite — what we are not. Our life’s trajectory may be brief, and it feels even smaller when measured against the vast expanse of time in the universe (as we understand it today).
From my perspective, life has two ends, yet the music of existence was playing long before I appeared and will continue long after I am gone. Everyone observes this in the world around them: babies are born after I was there, while others pass away while I am still here.
The same holds true for space. After birth, our movements rarely stray far from where we are. Occasionally, we may take a vacation and journey to the opposite side of the Earth, but even those distances are insignificant compared to the vastness of space that is out there. From high above, our daily wanderings, if traced on paper, might resemble the erratic buzz of a mosquito confined to a radius of just 10 feet.
As unsettling as the awareness of mortality may be, it also brings with it a profound recognition of the vastness of space and time that transcends us. If only we could find a portal to bridge the divide between the two, we might escape the constraints of our finitude.
In the realm of gravity, there exists the concept of escape velocity. With enough force, a stone hurled at an initial velocity of 11 km/s will break free from Earth’s gravitational pull, continuing its journey indefinitely into the void of space.
Could there be something analogous that propels us beyond the limitations of mortality, connecting us to the boundless expanse of space and time? Is there a force that, working against the field of mortality, might grant us a sense of timelessness? Perhaps there is.
The transcendental and spiritual experiences we have been told about may serve as the escape velocity in the context of mortality. At times, even without consciously seeking them, we are unexpectedly struck by sublime moments that connect our finite sense of self with the vastness beyond. These moments might include holding your newborn for the first time, savoring the first bite of a cheesecake, standing at the edge of Point Udall in St. Croix and gazing at the endless blue ocean stretching to the horizon, or experiencing a psychedelic epiphany.
In such instances, the limitations of gravity seem to dissolve, and we are propelled beyond the constraints of mortality, connecting with the timeless continuum of all that existed before us and all that will endure after us. In these moments, we shed our sense of finitude and glimpse the vastness of infinite.
And so, just as there is a mechanism to overcome gravity, there exists one to propel us beyond the constraints of mortality: transcendental experiences. If only those fleeting moments could last longer.
Ciao, and thanks for reading.