Jim Martin

Out of Chaos, Shapes Jim Martin

What is "Beyond the Edge of Being"? Is there something 'out there', whole and entire, yet beyond our comprehension? If I feel something out there, does that feeling put it there? Or, does what I feel bring itself to my conscious awareness? When we read what humans have thought, no matter how far back we go, those thoughts are comprehensible to today's minds. Even thoughts about beings we have never personally known. Among our earliest constructs were thoughts about our ancestors. Those thoughts, like all thought, traveled their own paths before written words, and the thoughts they created moved us from the contemplation of ancestry to thoughts like spirits within us, who give us life, then leave when we die; and, further, to other spirits who connect us to that other world where the ancestors live, and will transport there where we die. From ethereal mists to cadres of entities who oversee our lives, we have thought and dreamed about who we are, what we are, and why. While our visions vary, have led to wars, they have also stimulated thoughts about our similarities, our increasingly common navigation toward recognition that we are all people, just people. Quite a feat for a recently evolved Primate, living on a large rock in a solar system. We have emerged from the open Savannah, and over a long period of time, discovered that, while we are spread across the planet, we are one people. All from our experience with small shapes which, with our words and feelings, have merged to generate a concept which tells us with certainty, that yes, we are people, and we have sensed a larger world beyond us. This, I find a marvelous triumph for living beings, on a small planet in the middle of an enormous universe.