Spring Reflections

In our walled garden, as in the rest of the northern temperate zone, the plant-folk are awakening. The crocuses and daffodils, those early risers, have been up and about for a few weeks now, and the youthful tulip shoots will soon be hearing their annual alarm clocks go off. Within a week or two they should be popping open in memorable bursts of scarlet, pink and purple. I’m happy to see that the bulbs I planted last fall are justifying all the grim labor I put into them. They’d be even more useful if they’d bear vegetables or twenty-dollar bills on top of their flowers, but I’m content merely to gawk at the merry carnival of color. 

It’s spring, and the world wants to cajole us into believing that life renews itself each year. God is an optimist, after all. Anyone who troubled himself to create such a vast and convoluted universe has to believe in positive outcomes. This annual blooming festival is the handiwork of a deity who obviously wants us all to get into the life-affirming spirit of procreation. Most of the birds and beasts oblige him, though certain insects and fishes jump into the ritual without suspecting that reproduction exacts a prohibitive price; i.e., their imminent demise. There they go, those crazed warriors of prehistoric lineage, dumping their seed together in a final fatal act of earthly consummation. Their mission accomplished, they slink away to die and rot, blissfully unaware that they lived only as convenient vehicles for the safe transport and propagation of ancient genes.

Is it any different with those of us who call ourselves higher animals? As Samuel Butler, that perceptive Victorian scribe and possibly the world’s first sociobiologist, put it, "A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg." We like to think our own species was designed for a higher purpose than making eggs, and we can come up with ample evidence to justify our claim: the wheel, the telescope, the gothic cathedral, the Italian Renaissance, the printed book, the hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut, the personal computer and the Pez dispenser. But those achievements, as miraculous as they might appear to us, change not a molecule of our biological make-up. We’re still just the world’s premium brand of ape, born helpless and destined to die helpless, our bodies cast away like so many discarded peanut shells. 

Even as we romp and dance and walk around the park carrying hand-weights, our mirthful bodies already hold the skeletons that will emerge when our pliant flesh turns to unspeakable gunk and finally crumbles away. Just last week I paid a visit to the dentist and peeked at my X-rays: there, posted on the wall, was a pair of photos that revealed a portion of the grinning death-mask beneath my fleshy features. Within a half-century or so it would probably be an accurate, true-to-death portrait of Rick Bayan, cynical guy -- except that I’d most likely have a few teeth missing. So there I was, face-to-skull with my future self, not liking what I saw but trying to make friends with him all the same. My jawbone and grin, give or take a few teeth, undoubtedly looked pretty much like those of Shakespeare, Ben Franklin and Buffalo Bill; we tend to lose our singularity when we become skeletons. Does it matter that Shakespeare wrote thirty-odd plays that some of us still quote today? Of course it does, but not to his body; his genius didn’t prevent him from ending up as a forlorn heap of crumbling bones. Whether he had written Macbeth or planted parsnips, he would have ended up in the same predicament.

So when the budding greenery of springtime sings to your soul... when the blooming cherry trees puff like cumulus clouds and the birds make melody... take a moment to sniff the blossomy breeze and remind yourself that we’re all just temporary employees in this mortal business of life. We’re as fragile as Dresden china, as ultimately disposable as Kleenex. We’re dancing on the outer edge of a great wildfire, flickering until we’ve run out of fuel to burn, trying to ignore the charred blackness spreading out from behind us. 

When you go out for a walk on a glorious spring afternoon, look closely at the parade of life that passes you on the street: the chattering pedestrians with their cell phones, their children, their frolicking dogs. Take a moment to reflect that none of them will be here in a century; they’ll be as dead as the figures in Matthew Brady photographs, as biologically irrelevant as the tomato crop of 1906. Some of them will have fulfilled their earthly destiny, like Samuel Butler’s hen, by producing a new generation of eggs. Some of them won’t, and they’ll have to console themselves that they enjoyed a few glad moments of mirth, freedom and diversion. Or they might produce eggs of a different sort -- ornamental eggs that future generations might enjoy looking at, like Alice in Wonderland or the paintings of Van Gogh. But all of them will be as dead as mummies. Think of that when you venture forth on a sparkling spring day, and try to enjoy yourself anyway.

Cynic's Pick of the Week

As militant Muslims defended themselves against Jewish invaders by holing up inside the church that marked the birthplace of Jesus, it seemed that the three great Western religions were playing out the final scene of some grotesque and colossal farce. As one waggish spirit scribbled on a wall somewhere, ‘Dear God, please save us from the people who believe in you.’