Existence

First there was the Big Bang. Hydrogen and helium were created. Gravitational forces caused these primordial gases to condense into stars and galaxies. Massive stars burned fiercely and then exploded, spewing into the cosmos heavier elements produced inside those stars. Our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, formed. Our solar system formed. Earth formed, molten and barren. Comets brought water and perhaps seeded life on Earth. Plants created oxygen in the atmosphere, making possible animal life. Living things evolved.

And then the most surprising thing happened – surprising to me, at least. One fine Saturday morning, 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, I was born. At the time, I didn’t know about the Big Bang nor about the 13.8 billion years between it and me. But now I do know, and I think about it. I ask myself, “What took me so long to get down to the business of being born?”

For 13,798,000,000 years, plus or minus 37 million years, I didn't exist. Then, on a seemingly random morning, I suddenly existed. I opened my eyes and found myself in the world. Why that particular morning and not another morning? Why not a hundred years earlier, or a hundred years later? Or a thousand years earlier or later? Or ten thousand years? Why not a billion years ago on a different planet? Why that particular day on this particular planet?

It occurs to me that maybe I didn’t wait 13.8 billion years to have a life, and it only appears that I did.

When I was small, I felt sure my existence did not begin with my birth. I felt sure I had existed somewhere before I was born. It was like a memory of a memory. At times I felt I could almost remember that existence. Almost.

Jack London (The Call of the Wild, White Fang) said, "I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums. All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born."

Well put, Jack.

So here I am, right now. For some unfathomable reason, I exist at this point in space and time. For a little while, I exist, and I wonder. I wonder about questions without answers.

Voltaire said, “It is no more surprising to me to be born twice than it is to be born once; everything in nature is resurrection.”

He was right. Being born is very surprising. If it is possible to be born once, why not twice? Why not any number of times?

In Through A Glass Darkly, General George Patton wrote,

“Perhaps I stabbed our Savior, In His sacred helpless side.
Yet I've called His name in blessing When in after times I died.”

In the same poem he wrote,

“So as through a glass and darkly, The age long strife I see,
Where I fought in many guises, Many names – but always me.”

Little wonder he was such an outstanding warrior, with all those lifetimes of practice.

Henry Ford said, "I adopted the theory of reincarnation when I was 26. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives.”

I'm not a philosopher. I just write commentary. But what Henry Ford said: I don't doubt it for a second.