Thoughts on Life and Death

The essence of an individual person is more like a wave in the ocean than a physical embodiment. The wave is not the physical water. The wave is energy that causes the individual molecules of water to rise and fall vertically, while the wave passes through the water horizontally. For any given time t, at t+1 the wave has moved on to embody new water molecules. Such is the human body. All cells and the molecules which make up our bodies are continually being replaced, so after about seven years they are nearly totally replaced with different physical matter. Years later, we are still essentially the same wave, but of course we do change in some ways.

We also create ripple effects that influence many other people, and these people may also create ripples that permanently affect us. Thus, each of us “waves” are commingled into a great mesh network.

People who make a difference do not die. The “wave” that they are is still moving around through the physical material that makes up people they have touched. Those waves will in turn into ripples through others, so perhaps in a sense we all continue to exist as waveforms.

by Peter Livingstone on his Facebook page on March 30, 2024