Life is Soupy

02023-03-13 | Environment, Philosophy | 1 comment

Every moment is a new beginning
– T. S. Elliot

Life is one continuous mistake
– Dogen

Everything is equally evolved
– Lynn Margoulis

Life is soupy, mixed up and tumultuous. Muddying the waters is precisely the point, because it’s from such nutritious streams that life grows.
– James Bridle, Ways of Being

Every moment is a new beginning. That’s the saving grace… we can make changes, sometimes, usually, hopefully. The second quote sounds more depressing than it is. For me Life is one continuous mistake means that we might as well be prepared to keep getting up, because we will continue to fall down. I like to remember all of the lucky accidents in art, in music, accidents that became the defining element of a work. The stupid mistake I just made may lead to a helpful insight later. We move forward, we fall, we get up, we get used to the fact that it’s all a continuous mistake.

A couple of days ago, while walking through Santa Fe, a sentence bloomed in my head: We are all broken.
This sentence appeared out of nowhere, like birdshit hitting me square on the bald head. The deaths of loved ones, accidents, medical emergencies, diseases, depression, sadness. We may pretend on Instagram that our lives are perfect, but no life is. It’s not perfection that makes a life beautiful, it’s the Kintsugi… putting the pieces back together as best we can. As Ram Dass said, We’re all just walking each other home. Hopefully we can be mended like this bowl, and wear our brokenness in beauty.*

That brings me to the quote by Lynn Margoulis, Everything is equally evolved. Everything on this planet evolved together. Humans aren’t separate. In fact we carry several pounds of non-human critters in our gut and share DNA with many plants and animals. We didn’t rise out of nature, and we are not separate or above nature, we rose in nature. We rose in the soup, together with everything else.