Who are we, really? And what is the consciousness that can ask this question?

I’ve been prompted to reflect on this quintessential philosophical question in relation to a bout of the “Quimper-area crud” that befriended me early in the week of Good Friday/Easter and from which I’m still recovering. During these past four weeks, I’ve had just enough energy to get me through Sunday services, my poetry classes, and a few meetings (complete with surgical mask), but little else.

I say “I’m recovering” and I say “I’ve found just enough energy;” but, really, “I” have nothing (or very little) to do with the recovery, and the energy of which I speak does not belong to me. I experience the energy but do not produce it; and I am pleased to recognize a recovery, but it is the larger organism that recovers.

During much of this time, the “I” was largely knocked out of commission in sleep; and, in such waking periods as occurred, the most it could do was wait for the larger organism to allow the “I” to function as it is accustomed to function.

Also, during this time, there was not enough energy/consciousness to consider the philosophical question I’m now addressing.

But now that the larger organism to which I belong has largely recovered and I begin to “feel like myself again,” I reflect with gratitude and humility on the health I normally take for granted, I consider with new empathy the multitudes who struggle daily with health-related issues, and I remember so many I have known and loved whose consciousness shone so brightly for so many years only to fade and go out in later years.

Also, I mentally prepare to acquiesce to the time when the organism with which “I” am intimately connected can no longer sustain its present consciousness. This, too, is part of our human journey.

And this, too, is part of “the immense journey” (Loren Eiseley) of Being/Becoming, which, it would seem, has a drive to become aware of itself. We are instruments/vessels/servants of that drive, our “honor and hardship”. (Robinson Jeffers)

Bruce Bode