We can neither be created nor destroyed. We are not discrete, but continuous. We are not exempt from the cycles of existence, and we will flow through the world just as the world flows through us.
The water cycle: rain falls and gathers in lakes, rivers, ponds, bodies, the earth; all the reservoirs of the world. In time, it evaporates and makes its way back into the sky to become rain again. Sometimes it is consumed, but it flows through life just as easily as it does dirt.
Food chains: the sun feeds the plants, which feed the animals; one thing consumes another, all the way up until the decomposers consume the predator and return the energy to the soil, feeding the plants. The Little Ones sustain us all, in the end.
Life cycles: things are born, grow, propagate, and die. Their offspring continue the same cycle over and over again. Even when one being does not reproduce, it is reclaimed by the food chain so that another being may continue its own cycle.
Matter: matter is energy is matter, cycling from state to state but never ceasing to exist; stars burn to bring together the disparate pieces of existence, only to dim or explode as their energy leaves them. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed. Water was once hydrogen and oxygen, which was once just hydrogen, which was once just energy. Sometimes it becomes energy once more.
What makes us any different from anything else? Water passes through us like everything else; we are 70% a thing in passing. We feed until our bodies return to the earth and feed the next thing in the cycle. We are born, we do things, and we die. Our bodies become energy for the next entity in the cycle of things. Their bodies become energy for ours.
We are made of the energy of billions mixed together to create a fleeting moment of something that will never exist again, always changing, always in flux. One day it will all be returned. In this moment, it is here.
Even then, we are entered and exited by the billions of creatures only microscopes can see. The cycle passes through us and claims us. Humans are not exempt from the cycle of things.
Nothing is lost.
Self-authored, 2025.
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein