by Kip Sikora

Created on: January 23, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous and potassium are several of the many elements found in scores of organisms. Tossing these blindly into a pot and stirring it with the stick of chance may yield little more than a frothy, muddled soup, yet in the right proportions, and with a twist of the mystery we will never solve, they give rise to human life. We are born; we grow; we live and we die. When we die, the same elements that were once integral building blocks of our physical selves are recovered by the great life cycle. Nature is nothing if not efficient, and the vast, intricately woven web of organic life reabsorbs the elements that once made up the body in ways we cannot foresee.

I like to imagine that the chemical decomposition and subsequent release of nutrients from my remains will feed the growth of a plant. Perhaps this plant will be eaten by a worm, which in turn will be consumed by bird. For the sake of discussion, let's say this bird lives near the ocean. After digesting the invertebrate, it takes flight, eventually defecating over the water. Sinking below the surface, these nutrients, now in the form of microscopic elements, are consumed by plankton. Even in the form of excrement there is some sliver of the elements, which in some far removed, yet very real way were once me'. After bobbing along in a thermal current, the plankton are consumed by a whale. Such a cycle could continue with an infinite number of variations, and each step would represent the continued transmission and recombination of the basic elements critical to organic life forms.

This is nothing more than a simplified expression of the food chain, but as humans, we often separate ourselves from it. And in that separation we lose sight of the fact that death is an arbitrary perspective. It is as much a new beginning as it is a grim finality, but seeing through the veil of its illusion calls for a recalibration of perception. We are all constituent parts of something far more vast than the finite mind can comprehend. We cannot know' it, yet we can feel it. In the great flow of life our forms may change, but our energy is eternal. I take a considerable amount of comfort in this.

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