The Roman Janus looked to the future and the past.  When are we not transitioning? Every cell in our body must regenerate multiple times during the span of an average lifetime.  This begs the question: Do we have a body or bodies? When we think back to the past, we are essentially recalling a different physical being.  To refer to our bodies as a single entity seems childish.  Thousands of cells not only work, live and die within us every day, but our bodies play the gracious host to bacteria and other life forms. Many of these creatures have coevolved with us to such a degree that they are essential to our health. In effect, each one of us is the stage for an epic battle filled with microscopic intrigues between allies and foes.  The stakes could not be higher.

Life is a struggle. I can’t help feeling that we are the subject of some cosmic nature documentary. Our needs are not that different from those of the cheetah or the dolphin.  Even the most prosperous societies most participate in the evolutionary chess match.  Eat, sleep, find security, mate, and repeat.  We like to think we have removed ourselves from the game, but all we’ve done is complicate the rules.  The board is set, the clock has started. The pawn moves forward without knowing if it will be sacrificed.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the human animal is the development of complex emotions.  We have the ability to be so tender towards others that we donate vital organs to save the lives of strangers. How many hyenas have you seen care for a pet, much less dress a dog up in baby clothes and speak to it in cutesy infantile tones? Yet the same kindness is the flip side of cruelty. The Janus can never have just one side.

One must be stoic in the face of reality. Our double cheeseburgers don’t really cook themselves.  Nevertheless, I hope that we continue evolving in a way that makes all of our yokes easier to bear. As for me, I will soldier on. Let me know if you need help bearing the weight of life.

Life is a struggle. In order to move forward, you must fight. The bell will not ring for the end of the round. The match is everlasting. The prize: Your conscience.

Does anyone truly remember the day of their birth? At some point each one of us became sentient. To pinpoint the moment when you became self-aware would be uncanny.  Life does not work that way.  Nevertheless, there was a moment when we became truly human.  The question is not about the primal instinct to breathe, eat, and defecate, but rather about consciousness.  Why are we conscious? More importantly, why do we have a drive to be moral?

I was born a child in need. Ten-weeks premature and breathing fluid, my heart beat out every rhythm as if it was its last.  This is how the myth was passed down to me:

My twenty-year-old mother entered the hospital in great distress.  She had been told during her pregnancy that she should take hot baths to ease her cramps.  She was at work when the pain started. Having had a jaundiced daughter 18 months before, she knew that it was time. The doctors told her that I would have to be a C-section.  I was soon carved out of her as expertly as the 80s would allow.  I was soon in an incubator, fragile and grasping for a future.

That is when the miracle happened.

As I lay just beyond the reach of Death, my family gathered good people together to weep and pray over me.  The fluid in my lungs was drained. My heart strengthened.  From then on I began to steadily improve.  I was taught that it was nothing less than an holy intervention: That the hand of God had saved me. While I lay there innocently, other infants weren’t so lucky. My mother once told me that she would never forget seeing another young woman cradling her lifeless child in a rocking chair in the neonatal ICU, sobbing uncontrollably.

Blissfully unaware of such tragedy, I was taken home several weeks later.  My father said I was so small that they had to find doll’s clothing for me to wear.  He was able to hold me with two cupped hands.  How I grew up to be a six foot tall firebrand is beyond me.

So, why mention all of this? Why speak of the forlorn ghosts of the past?  Well, this story has stuck with me for all my life. I’ve grown into a deeply philosophical man.  At the tender age of 8 or so I considered becoming a missionary. The arguments of modern science and an openness to the learning of other cultures and traditions has made me aspire to be more of a Renaissance man than a man of the cloth.  Nevertheless, the whisper of the myth stays with me.

What am I to do with my life? The whisper strums my heart as if a troubadour proclaimed the answer with resolute melancholy from a cobbled street corner. Carried softly on the wind I hear, “Be moral. Do good. Honor the miracle of your life…”