Timeline

Looking out the window at chickadees flitting to and from the feeder, hammering their seeds in the safety of the juniper. We’ve been feeding them for many years. Enjoying them. Feeling somehow connected to them. Then comes a clear vision. They are not the same chickadees we were feeding only a few years ago. Those are all dead. These too will be dead in a year or two. And yet we always have chickadees.

Life seems so rich. So full. Bursting with energy. Build a nest. Mate. Lay eggs. Raise young. It must be so, because the individual is so fleeting. It is the same for us. Time seems forever. But it is all perspective. So many years ago to have been a child. So many years ahead to think about grandchildren growing up. It’s a long time, and things in the now seem so important. Yet they are so small. A billion people feel the same. Or so we think.

The universe looking down on us. We are but a mote in a remote arm of a galaxy among myriad. How many more like us out there somewhere? And where do we fit in the scheme of things? In the cycle of Suns, our whole earth is more humble than the chickadee.

Consciousness. Somehow it makes us feel like the center for the brief candle flicker that is us. What is it? And why do we have it? And what does it matter in a view of the universe from outside?

Is the chickadee free of such wonderings?