Do you believe in life after death?
I have no proof, but I do anyway. I talk to my dead. How can you stop talking to those whom you love after they died?
A tone of voice will bring my dad to mind, a tool I’ve used for forty years, the memory of an ridiculous straw hat with colored pompoms on it used for camping. You can’t fry bacon and pour fresh coffee without bringing my grandma into the room with me.
I wonder how these departed souls are affected by quantum entanglement. I love the concept of quantum entanglement, two crystal particles whose link isn’t a response, but one movement bound by the other, a dance with an eternal partner, faster than the speed of light. It’s one more mystery humans haven’t completely solved.
So what happens when I ask my dad to keep an eye on his grandson, a boy who follows in his footsteps even though they never met, even though I haven’t seen my dad since 1973 when I was just a girl? Is there a linked movement on the other side of reality that I could never sense? Is there quantum entanglement that exists between us?
What happens when I sing a song that was written by a musician who has already died? What flutters around ideas in books written by those I can never meet, but whom I love for their words delivered across time? What about the inner space in front of a painting that stuns the viewer. I still remember the effect on me of a drawing by Van Gogh that I saw in 1984 at the MOMA in NYC. That moment is not dead, but still vibrates in my soul. Does it vibrate in his?
What about evil and cruelty? Do they also have links to propagate into the future? I learned today from a TED Talk by Annie Murphy Paul that starvation and stress are learned by a fetus in the womb, that they are born and grow up with reactions to that starvation and stress that continue for a lifetime. I read that it takes five generations for a family to heal from a trauma. I wonder if it’s even possible or if the trauma is passed on from generation to generation to generation and on into the future.
It’s strange how entranced I am about staying connected with the love of those who have died, but I don’t want it to be equally true about evil. But if I’m willing to feel the love across the divide, shouldn’t I I have to look at the pain as well? I have to imagine that the equation is balanced between good and evil, don’t I? No. I might look, examine the nature of good and evil, but I can hope the balance weighs on the side of love. I can hope.
Or maybe I’m just throwing ideas into the air and hoping they’ll spin a particle in a different direction than anyone expected.
Thank you for listening, jules