Microcosmic Gods

We really can't hold on. We can't even hold on to one part of it or even one piece. Naked we are born and naked we leave -- Job said. Yet, oh how we try. In high school I read, "Microcosmic Gods." It's an early scifi story about a scientist who creates life in a petrie dish and then continues to test and strengthen that life over time. At each test many of the organisms die, but those who adapted to the test or were strong enough to endure lived on to reproduce a stronger offspring -- evolution microscopically. As time passed and years went by the experiments continued until the organisms became more intelligent than the scientist, yet, they always thought of him as their father, their god. Finally, at the end of the story, they reach out to assist their own god realizing he is inferior to them.

Sometimes it seems we are nothing more than organisms in a petrie dish. He strips of this and that. At the moment it seems unbearable and we kick and scream against him, against reality, in death throws. What follows is a period of coma where we are zombies living in the aftermath of the loss, in shock, in lingering disbelief. Ah, reality "is strict in his arrest" (as Hamlet might say). The ultimate manifestation of reality is death, and we will all most likely attend a service wherein we bury someone and face that reality.

It is reality that we must serve. Attempts to circumvent it end in disaster. Our brains, it seems, are adroit at leading us into un-realities ... things that, at the moment, seem so promising but end in harm. All difficulties, really, come from a struggle against reality. Spending money that we do not have, eating food that we do not need, making love to someone who is not ours -- all of these are harmful to our existence. So we do the un-realities and we reap the results: obesity, debt and broken homes. To "fix" we liposuction, bankruptcy and remarry.... then we suffer illnesses, age quicker and die sooner. The body, it seems, creates sickness that reflect the harm of our attempts against reality.

Reality is the scientist and his tests. We are the organisms. But it is not always ill that he bestows. Sometimes he showers down nutrients that grow without killing. We can spend the money we do have. We can eat the food we need. We can make love to someone who is ours. Perhaps all religion is really a force trying to steer humanity away from the forays into the streams of un-reality and back into the healthy river life, reality. It seems we are meant to live in plurality and to do so we must be in harmony. Anyone in the choir who does not sing the same song, the same key and the same rhythm causes discord and it is unpleasant to the ear. Heh, in some church right now somewhere in the country sits someone listening to bad singing, wincing, thinking, "how on earth did they allow this music?" Yet, that person is fat or bankrupt or making love to someone not theirs and reality chuckles at the irony....

Perhaps, if we keep struggling to live in harmony with reality we will grow to benefit that reality. Perhaps, it is only by, first, giving in that we truly start to live. Once we give in we thrive and once we thrive we contribute. Finally, we are reality, we are life and everything we do prospers. Then, we are organisms who have reached a place beneficial to our creator....