Marcus Alden Meredith
August 10, 2025
(Acc. Music: 1. Fortanach by Sebastian Plano 2. Last and First Light by Scott Buckley)

“That Life Exists, and Identity”

Encountering the Paradox of Life

How often have you had that quiet moment when your mind was very calm and you could just contemplate the very substance of your existence. You achieve that state of mind where every question seems to be answerable, and the very nature of your being as a human being becomes crystal clear. I’ve only encountered it a few times in my life and always when very quiet or with some very soft music of just the right type or genre helps focus your mind on such deep questions. These times when your place in the Universe condenses into one of insight and clarity. It most often has happened when I meditate and this sense of oneness set along side independence from the Universe, from all of existence, seems to precipitate out like stars coming to light at the end of twilight. 

It is one of the most unique aspects of the human mind that it is the only organ of any animal that we are able to say with some certainty has the ability to examine itself. I mean if you get radically reductionist you can think of the brain as just another biological organ that operates within the rules of chemistry and physics. It’s complexity when examined closely is the beginning when we start to realize that of all that makes us human, this is the seat of greatest flow and sophistication in all of biology. When you examine the dendritic branching of neurons then look at the large-scale structure of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the Universe, the similarity might make you wonder if the Universe isn’t one giant brain and that we are just one connection in all of Existence. 

I know, I know… I’m getting a bit spiritual for some of my readers. It’s not my usual bend, but it does have it’s corresponding aspects with some of Stoic ideas. Ataraxia - a state of being completely still and at peace- is not Stoic a idea that’s discussed too much especially in modern terms. It is so similar to the Buddhist aspect of Nirvana that the two could almost be swapped outright. And yet despite these similarities, it just doesn’t come up much in Stoic discussions. Why? Really…. I don’t know. I suspect that there are a couple of reasons. First, in the 21st Century most people tend to be less spiritually oriented than in the past and we are just, more or less, acting as a bunch of vulgar materialists (not that there’s anything wrong with that, within certain bounds). After all, I must come to the admission that I am really just a lone primate trying to maximize his pleasure while at the same time trying to live a long life and doing as little harm as possible. There we have the plain brass-tacks realization of what it is, in one way, of being alive. Second, I think that we’ve constructed a personal universe (yes, lower case “u”) where for most people the idea of silence and contemplation is either unachievable or alarmingly frightening. It must be rather amazing to most people when such a still, contemplative moment hits them either by design or by accident or chance.

I think that two pursuits of mine helped me to encounter these moments of stillness. And by stillness I don’t mean just silence, but STILLNESS even when there may be something like music playing. The first was music. I am classically trained and even when I developed a taste for pop music in my teen years, I always retreated to my classical music to feel more centered and secure. The symphonies of Beethoven or Schubert, the New Age music of the 1980’s, the purely electronic music of the late 80’s into the modern time, all these have had a way of being a retreat from the frenetic life of the world outside. Secondly was zen meditation as introduced to me through the martial arts. I had a family that had a lot of psychologists in it and this notion of meditation was well accepted as just another aspect of body/mind work. I even had the opportunity to engage in some biofeedback work with my grandfather and being able to consciously control certain autonomic (or seemingly autonomic functions) of the body was a huge boon to my training athletically and mentally.

The other aspect of this very still mind that a lot of people hav experienced usually happens for people when they are alone in Nature. I remember waking up from a long nap in the mountains of the Pike National Forest in Colorado where my grandparents owned a cabin. It had grown dark and it was moonless that night. As I roused out of the hammock, I looked up to see a sky filled with the Milky Way and at 8000 feet it was just stunning. Yup, in fact, that’s the word I’m looking for: stunning. I was so stunned at the number of stars in the sky that I just stood there saying to myself, “There’s SO many stars!” This was transcendental, beyond words to adequately convey. I felt so small and yet so connected all at the same time. In the past this would have been taken for a religious experience. But I am fortunately a scientist and understand more of what I was seeing than most. You see, it is a fundamental error that most people make by confusing G•O•D with N•A•T•U•R•E. We are the Universe made into sentient beings and thus a means by which The Universe is able to know itself. This is what all that mystical mumbo jumbo of all the supposedly “holy” books is really all about. You want to know “God” then go out to a place far from the city, on a moonless night (maybe when there’s a meteor shower), take a pair of binoculars or a small telescope, and actually SEE the Universe in all it’s glory… and remember, you are a part of that. It always reminds me of that part of the poem by Walt Whitman “Oh me! Oh Life!”:

“Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring.

Of the endless trains of the faithless,

Of cities fill’d with the foolish,…

… What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer:

That you are here… that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on,

and you may contribute a verse.”

That the powerful play goes and you may contribute a verse… As Robin Williams character of Mr. Keeting asked in The Dead Poet’s Society: “ And what will your verse be?”