It was some thought. I have won a small amount once: 11 euros, got four numbers right.

Lately it has occurred to me, sitting here, reading, watching, seeing, that in fact, I am already a lottery winner. You who are reading this, and even those who are not, too. Everyone alive is a winner.

I mean, what are the chances of your being alive, here, now, today? There are zillions of planets, stars, perhaps several with life on them. There are billions of people and thousands of years of history. There will be thousands mpre years of humanity to come. But you are now.

Look at your hands. Look and take them in. Look at this word, listen to those sounds, take a breath. That is you, alive, recording, absorbing, witnessing. In the blink of an eye you and I will be gone. This is your moment, my moment.

Before you think this is some business motivation talk, forget it. Nor is my motivation religious. But just think for a second.

The chances that life should be in you, now, at this point, are infinitely slimmer than winning any lottery ticket. Further, the prize of the chance we have is far far greater than any cash prize. Life itself, with its complications, joys, trials and rewards, is a rare and quite incredible gift in itself.

Sure, how nice it would be to win a few million, but how tragic if the real luck of life, the life function, passed you by.

So, what is life? To me the answer is becoming fairly simple and ascientific.

No, the answer is not religious. Okay, I read the bible as a kid, a great read, nice pictures, good but implausible stories. Then I spent most of my teens and adulthood being a good, humanist, concrete aetheist.

I still feel I am an aetheist in a broad sense, not an agnostic. I am in no doubt that there is no God in terms of person that we must worship, lay down before. That would be to insult intelligence, to mock God. That God was a creation, a manipulation and twisting of scriptures by people seeking power of their own. Jesus probably existed and he said many fine things. At the very least, he was probably an Angel, and may well have been the Son of God, rather as we all are. What struck me most about what he said, and which chimes in with this existential, metaphysical idea that has been growing in my head, is the light. I am the light.

What did he mean? Well, perhaps I have an idea. Light pours through us. It is our connection with experience, with our gift of life, our lottery ticket and chance to be here, now. We were born, we engage, we die. When we die, our chance has gone, there is no coming back, not in the normal sense.

The technology age teaches us about networks. We too are in a network, of light, energy. I don't want to get into consciousness just yet, I have not thought about how it corresponds with light.

But experience in general, our evolution, is recorded via our individual experiences, somehow. The world evolves via our actions, we are immersed in that world more than we think, though we are also champions of it. But it is not about something out there. Rather, it is in you.

Could it be that we relate that experience back to some kind of force or nerve centre? A Matrix? Node of information, of evolving intelligence? And when our bodies die, so our consciousness, our spirit, our light, continue. This is where my thinking stops for now. Should I continue?

realterms@gmail.com

©RJ Doyle

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