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Me, I, My and Us, the MIMU of Self

BY LYNARD – March 2025

DEATH AS A DEFINITION OF LIFE

The death of actor Gene Hackman, a former fellow-Marine and his wife, Betsy Arakawa raises the question of why we do not celebrate death as we celebrate life. Arakawa is believed to have died on February 11th, Hackman on the 18th. Their deaths were in isolation, like many. Unlike many, their deaths were unknown to the world for a week.

Everyone eventually dies. As everyone is born. It is the condition of existence.

While we like to believe science has taken the mystery out of both birth and death, science provides no clue as to the why. For the why we are left to speculate. And speculate we do. We have went so far as to codify the why into a gazillion religions.

The purpose of life has an equal multitude of guesses. For the purpose of death, not so much. The science of physics points us in a general direction to address both issues. Life as energy gradually undergoing entropy which eventually leads to death. And the transformation of energy back into a new life.

Maybe at some level of human consciousness, this life-death cycle is intuitively understood. We celebrate a new life as a new energy to which we can relate. Death on the other hand leaves a gap in the energy field of life. Is this absence the reason we do not celebrate the death of life? If we do no–and we indeed do not–we miss an important facet of our existence. The most important facet. The only facet that really makes sense in pursuit of the why. Every birth, regardless of who, what, where and when, is an affirmation of our own existence. Every death is an equal affirmation of our existence. To celebrate death is to say that the life passing through this life has propagated life itself. Of course, this requires an appreciation of life. How often do we stop “living” and simply appreciate life itself?

In the Vietnam war, grunts (the warriors actually doing the fighting) had a succinct version of Psalm 23:4. The Psalm version:

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. . .”

The grunts version:

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because I’m the baddest mother-fucker in the valley.”

A more relevant version for all pretense of religion or none would be:

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because I am for eternity the shadow, the light, death.”

The MIMU of self.

May Gene Hackman, his wife, Betsy Arakawa and all the billions who have preceded them rest in peace for a while and maybe a little longer.