Life in the Middle

Humans have been predicting the end of the world probably ever since their brains could rub two sticks together. Today we know, by the surety of science, that the world will indeed end. Its fate being tied to that of our Sun, a star, and we know that stars have a life cycle and die. The good news is that the sun is now in its middle age of a projected 10 billion year life span. That means we have 5 billion years to go, barring any other major cosmic or Earthly accident or malady.

 The parallel between the Sun and the Earth's life cycle and our own is curious. We too have a projected life span, that could be cut short should accident or illness beset us.  This makes one imagine the Earth having sleepless nights filled with anxiety over its future death, like our own, one so riddled with terrible possibilities.  "Will I go by accident or illness, car wreck (meteor) or cancer (us)?"

Like us, the Sun is born in a womb and formed from the gathered materials of its surroundings. It has a life span in which it gives off energy, creates life among one of its planetary offspring (arguably a middle one), and after billions of years, barring something going terribly afoul, the sun dies from being unable to further digest its resources, either in a bang or a whimper. It's curious that at the middle point of it's span is when life appears on Earth. Life thrives at the middle section of the Earth's sphere, thinning out as it nears the poles. Earth orbits in a Goldilocks' zone around the Sun - a middle of sorts. Our sun is a main sequence star of average (mean, middle) size and brightness.  Our sun itself is a Goldilocks star - not too big not too small, not too hot, not too cold.  We are here because past stars exploded (died). Our bodies are composed of dead exploded star stuff.

 Our very lives are sustained and fed in our middles.  Human life begins, grows, and swells into a big round belly ball, that's right, In The Middle. The middle span of a person's years are the most productive, this is usually where we raise our own children, and do our share of contributing to society - work. 

Life, the magic of all creation, happens in the middle, between the pushes and pulls of opposition. Within that sweet spot between man and woman comes the child. Magic happens in the middle.  The good news is that we are at the middle, not at the end of existence.  We may even be in the middle of the lifespan of the universe.

I put forth that the earth is alive, not in quite the same way as you or I, or how we define life, but it is an organism of organisms - the host of hosts. A delicately balanced gathering of conditions sustain it as such. Our bodies are merely a gathering of synchronized specialized symbiotic cells and organs each working together to sustain life. The Earth too is a symbiotic gathering of conditions. There is a long list of contingencies that must all come together in order for life to exist on this planet,  conditions yet unobserved among the other planets we can identify in the cosmos (of course these are very far away and very hard too see).  Nothing in our immediate solar system comes close to meeting the conditions for life found on our planet Earth.  Our mother Earth is a prize to be treasured

At the middle of its long long existence (13.75 billion years) a very special part of the universe began to wake up and view its own grandeur.  We are that special part, and our job and our joy is to behold it all in wondering awe.  We have been awakened in the middle.  Each human in the span of their life should seek for a same kind of  profound awakening, best accomplished from the perspective of the middle years.  I am striving to awaken to the wonder and awe that I glimpse around me.  I suspect it is more than the sum of its parts. I examine the parts and am struck that they fit together in some meaningful way. Call it premonition, intuition, a sense of the mystical; I am striving to put together the puzzle of existence. The perfect word for this mental attempt is Grok - I am striving to grok existence and creation.  Noting that by "irony of fact", what we behold as reality (this existence) may be a special case of reality; a dimension within another dimension of truth (facts).  This puzzle may be a puzzle within a larger puzzle.  What we perceive and understand might be the failings of a logical mind in an illogical frame.  We may not be able to understand our reality due to the limitation of our minds, our incompatible or limited perceptions, or our very logic which is not tuned to a paradoxical reality..

Man has always tried to put the puzzle together and it's surprising the agreement we find between the known attempts of different cultures.  After I had stumbled upon the idea of the middle, the synthesis of my own thoughts and observations, I found that many others had been there before me.

As a few examples, in Greek philosophy from the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle we have it in the idea of the Golden Mean (not to be confused with the Golden Ratio), expressed as a desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. Note: Mean used as a noun denotes something that is midway between two extremes.

The Doctrine of the Mean is a corresponding doctrine of Confucian Philosophy which extols, and teaches a man to tread the middle.

An extollment of moderation and temperance shows up in the early period of the United States as somewhat a religious movement. Ben Franklin was a prominent voice on this topic.  It's interesting that the words moderation and modesty share the same root - mean or middle -  yet feel a little separated from each other in definition, since modesty has an overt sexual dress and behavior connotation and in that sense becoming a bit more austere than what thinking of a middle stance would look like on dress and sexuality.  Modesty also means not given to extremes in self assessment, or the assessment of others, and issues.

In mathematics and the arts we have a sort of middle rule expressed as the Golden Ratio - which deals with pleasing proportions and balance.  Middle also has an inherent symmettry in many cases - symmetry is pleasing to us and our thinking - lending a quality of order, agreement, balance.

There are likely many other examples from other disciplines and cultures. The point is that life requires balance to exist and grow, and that balance is found in the middle.  Being diagnosed as bipolar, seeking the middle becomes even more important to me, and a more difficult task than most people will experience.  The very nature of Bipolar illness is a problem with extremes.  Depression and mania are states of mind wherein thoughts and feelings have gone too far from center and have become delusional.  A perspective of ultimate despair and doom is just as delusional as hearing voices or claiming to be god. 

I will most likely write more about my thoughts on bipolar illness in a future blog.  For now, live long and prosper (in the middle) and be sure to throw some wondering awe in there from time to time as a tribute to your maker, be that God or the Cosmos.  Life is still a miracle, and their is so much evidence to suggest that it occurs, and is best lived in the middle.

BTW - I wrote a song about the middle, based on a poem I'd written years earlier - here's the link
OneToMany - In The Middle


Here's the Poem

IN THE MIDDLE       7-14-98

Getting bigger than my britches
I bust the seams, and tear the stitches
I once was scrawny, now growing fat
I once was brawny, imagine that!

We like to take things to extremes
Our intense human ideas and dreams
but hear my growing pudgy riddle
“Life is best lived in the middle”

The brilliant sun with all it’s done
is average and quite normal
It’s neither big, or small you see
Of all stars in our galaxy
And in its span 10 billion years
Right at the half point life appears
On earth the middle of the spheres
Just like the mass between your ears

The tiny dwarfs they are too cold
for anything to live by them
The fireball giants they scorch too hot
Their planets they just fry them

But by our star life swells and flows
and with your nose you smell a rose
hands with  fingers, feet with toes
because life in the middle grows

In a week are seven days
There’s one for ponder, one for play
five are left between the two
These are the days when work we do

These work days they sustain our life
they’re full of worry, toil and strife
But without them we too would cease
Our lives would stagnate, no increase

Just like my belly begins to blossom
over the rim of my pants
My mid-age middle growing awesome
in a gruesome belly dance

A woman plump with a life so small
Much like the earth a big round ball
It all speaks to me and simply shows
that life best in the middle grows