Since I was young, I have always been bothered by the "little picture". Sometimes, it wasn't even a picture per se but the shading, the context in which the bigger picture was presented and viewed.

I wondered, Who am I? Not my name or personality, but my ALL. Without shape or color, without a sound, smell or any observable quantity, does it even really exist? A one-dimensional entity, without length width or depth, merely existing, a tiny yes in the eternal darkness of empty space...What is it, and of what is it made?

If you can say, "My soul", it is only a part of you.

If you can say, "My body", it too is only a part of you.

What is the whole, the 'you' to whom these things belong? It troubled me, and I niggled away at it as a child will harass a loose tooth, working at it til it is gone...And so it happened. I came to the following conclusions, after much thought:

Your soul is immortal in nature, existing in its own right eternally. However, it lacks purpose, and would be as a non-life in its complete lack of any pursuit of any goal, for to live is to strive.

Your body is a finite creation, not much more than a sculpture without the animating force of a soul. The body gives purpose to the immortal soul, and the soul lends life to its host.

When these two are enjoined, they become something new and different; a Life. A whole greater than the sum of its parts, it is a composite creature, no longer one or the other. Everything that breathes lives, and therefore all that breathes has a soul. This applies to things like goldfish and chrysanthemums as well as every human being on Earth.

But where do you draw the line? Within that definition, a car is alive; it takes in air, which goes into its body, and is exhaled through an exhaust pipe. You could argue that it is not made of living tissue, but in a marginal way it is; we, the animating soul of the car are made partially of flesh. Not enough flesh? But what of an oyster, who is more than fifty percent hard calcium? Are our bones not alive; are the exoskeletons of insects not an essential part of the creature? Or perhaps the concept of a separate and supposedly complete creature acting as the soul for another does not sit well...but can you definitively assert that the existence of an unencumbered soul is not a life in its own right? That we are like the car, in taking a complete being and making it part of us in a way similar to our practice of taking the physical half of a life and adding it to our own by consuming it? We ourselves in a purely physical and entirely scientific sense are already composite creatures, relying on millions of individual cells and micro-organisms to function.
The line for this form of reliance is also unclear; for where does our reliance on outside life forces end? Is it absolutely necessary to, say, have our skin cells constantly bombarded with mildly irradiated atoms of what we refer to as air saturated with sunlight? And yet without sunlight, our immune systems weaken, we suffer from depression and sleep more. It is so difficult as to be dismissed as impossible to distinguish where the line of reliance can be drawn. What makes a life - and what makes a life worth living? Are lives unlike the lives we know not lives at all, once applied to us personally? Is there an all-embracing, all-encompassing definition of life, independence, or the true identity of the Self?

There is a theory about the nature of Time that says this: There can be no such thing as the present, for if it can be divisible into the part that connects to the past, and another that connects to the future, then it is not a one-dimensional entity - it has length, which is a two dimensional ability. With Time as the fourth dimension, it is necessary that its ultimate division, the isolation of a single moment, a.k.a. the present, would be the primary dimension, of pure existence without length, width or depth.

Similarly, if a life is connected in a myriad of ways to others, is it truly a singular entity? Is the greater composite of this interconnectedness the true life - a whole world, all beings part of it the way mitochondria are a part of us? Is the planet part of a larger entity, far too vast to ever comprehend? Or is it both a wave and a particle; are all these lives both lives in and of themselves, and part of a greater composite, or symbiotic, being? What is the nature, not only of the Me, but life itself?

Okay, maybe it's not a “little picture”; but if that is so, then may I ask a final question:

Why does no one think about it? Because it's too small -or too big?

Fare thee well, friend of old
God has called you home
The night is turning cold
Go into the warm.
I'll see you on the other side
Be waiting there for me
My tired spirit please guide
'til I join your company.

(CHORUS)
What battles we have won and lost
Seen both defeat and glory
But O, at what cost
Did we buy our victory?

Make a place inside your heart
That I shall never leave
And though your spirit doth depart
My thoughts shall travel with thee
Make a place for me to dwell
On that far side of the Sea
Whether you go to Heaven or Hell
It will be home to me.

(CHORUS)
What battles we have won and lost
Seen both defeat and glory
But O, at what cost
Did we buy our victory?

Please wait for me, dear friend
Let no one bring you harm
Wait for me at the end
To welcome me into the warm.
As long as I have you
Waiting there for me
Life isn't quite so cruel
And in Death no terror be.

After yesterday's rant, here's something nice and light...Always thinking of you, gentle reader.

What a day this has been
We will never be the same
The things we have seen
And yet we still remain
Where is the strength to go on
After the great efforts of today
I have not the will to run
My eyes cannot see the way
Let me stay here forever
As a memorial of what was done
Standing still and shifting never
I will stand as all and one