Life: An Eternal Return

The word gift means n. present in English; it means n. poison in German. There is much to be said about such opposites. The cliche that one man's poison is another man's cure carries an important lesson. This double-sided dynamic operates deep in the vortex that spins new life. A member of Congress shot and on life support in a hospital opens an opportunity for the President to deliver what is arguably the defining speech of his career.

There are countless historic as well as current examples of this dynamic. Another is from the December 2000 issue of Discover magazine:

Pity the snow geese that settled on Lake Berkeley as a stopover one stormy night in November 1995. The vast lake, covering almost 700 acres of a former open-pit copper mine in Butte, Montana, holds some 30 billion gallons of highly acidic, metal-laden water— scarcely a suitable refuge for migrating birds stalled by harsh weather. So when the flock rose up and turned southward the following morning, almost 350 carcasses were left behind. Autopsies showed their insides were lined with burns and festering sores from exposure to high concentrations of copper, cadmium, and arsenic. 

Snow Goose

Now listen to how the deaths of these unfortunate snow geese by poison sparked evolution and its gifts. (The editing of this audio is questionable, but the information is truly astounding).

What can we learn from this? Maybe that death itself is only another word for life.

So with every disaster, every tragedy, every death, something new emerges. If we could only learn to see this clearly we would begin to understand how life is truly eternal.

For all things change, making way for each other.-- Euripides, Heracles