It is the very finitude of my existence that brings forth the honey. That I exist at all is nothing short of miraculous-I am awestruck by the very improbability yet here I am. Every thing around me is impermanent, whether it be the clouds currently wreathing themselves over the mountains, the glint of sunlight on the water in the creek, or the very mountains, even the Sun itself. It all came into existence, it was, and it will (if it hasn’t already) cease to be. I’ve buried both my parents and one of my siblings; I myself am not the healthiest kid in the county. I know and embrace my mortality. As I look around me I know this is the pattern of all things and realize that my physical degeneration in the end will bring forth new and wondrous things upon this Earth that I so love and admire, yet I know even the Earth is finite, that one day, perhaps five billion years hence, it to will cease and will return to its component atoms.

I became aware in the middle of the turning of the wheel; when I dissolve I know that that wheel will still be in the middle of its gyre. The stars will continue to shine, the winds to spread forth the bouquet of the warming spring soil, and the newly beloved to fall into the infinitude of each other’s eyes. Against all odds, I have been invited to the dance, life clasping me joyously to her bosom as we whirl about these few brief years. Tim, this isn’t nihilism, this is rapture! I am bathed in the fountains of wonder and awe. By nature curious (as I believe we all begin) I have come alive at a rare time when I am free to pursue answers, and when the answers as often as not come forth. That for every answer there arise more questions only increases my joy: it isn’t only the religious who find themselves summoned toward the infinite! Nor am I bitter because I will not live to see the end of the story, to hear the last question answered-this is a story without end, or still better, to conclude with William Blake:
To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.