We Shall Always Dance This Dance

Pink salmon in the Sinuk River flow. Art by Sue Steinacher.

By Dan Hagen

At some point, the neural circuits will shut down, the lights of consciousness will wink out, and the long nighty-night will begin. And we’ll be freed from all human concerns by the gift of nonexistence.

Until that point, we live still. After that point, we will be in precisely the same place we were before we were born.

Not there, not anywhere and without a care.

And yet physics says that time is not the inexorable, one-directional flow we perceive, but has a wholeness that transcends our human senses. That means that whatever was always is, somewhere, exactly as it was.

So we shall always dance this dance, and that should give us a clue to how we should live and behave. We must dance the kind of dance we would want to dance forever.