I’m not a religious person, but just recently I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the question of Everlasting Life.  It seems to me that first of all there must be a finite amount of ‘Life.’ Nothing else makes sense, really.  That being the case, what Life there is must somehow be recycled. I confess that the notion of a ‘heaven,’–or, indeed, hell–that serves as a repository for used up Life strikes me as being extremely wasteful.  Not to mention unsanitary.  So, if I believe anything, it would have to include the notion of recycling.  In other words, Everlasting Life. I know that a number of religions include such a feature, but I’m not necessarily suggesting any particular version of those.  You can fit my theory into whatever system works for you.

I wish I could claim the idea of The Snowman Theory of Everlasting Life as entirely my own work, but I must give credit where credit is due.  My son, Adam, listened to my slightly incoherent ramblings for a while, then boiled it all down nicely into a neat little philosophical parcel that I now will share with you. Naturally I have elaborated his ideas somewhat–developed the Theory further, you might say.   It works for me.

Life is like a Snowman. The Snowman is eventually going to melt–maybe quickly, maybe over a long period of time.  When He does, his Essence–in the case of the Snowman, that would be water–will find its way to a stream, perhaps running into a lake or a small pond, or even just a puddle.  It might even wind up reaching the sea. In any case, over time evaporation will convert it to moisture in the air.  That moisture may take the form of rain, or even snow.  Are you with me so far?

Alternatively, our melting Snowman might just soak into the ground. In that case He would be taken up by the roots of plants that would grow and eventually respirate, also feeding moisture into the air.  One way or another, our Snowman will wind up as rain and/or snow again.  But along the way He will have provided water, oxygen, even habitat for a wide range of plants, animals, fish, and microscopic life forms. Every bit of him will have been recycled.

Now here’s the thing:  I think there must be a basic Unit of Life, which for the moment I shall call Millimorphs.  Every single life form would be comprised of these Millimorphs, which–as the name suggests–can take any different form.  I’m not quite sure just how a group of Millimorphs get together to decide who’s going with whom and what they’re going to be, but I’m working on that.  Meanwhile, it is clear that even within the same species, not every specimen has the same number of Millimorphs as his/her cousins.  Consider, for example, George W. Bush and…well, almost anybody. Clearly we are not all created equal, Millimorphologically. Also, it isn’t always the case that each of the MMs (like that abrev.?) plays the role assigned to it.  Returning to our earlier example of George W, not all of the brain MMs went where they were supposed to.  Likewise, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and so forth.  It might just explain more precisely the origin of the term “dickhead.”

Like Millihelens as a measure of beauty, Millimorphs as a measure of Life might hold the key to understanding why there is so much wonderful diversity in the world.  Once we know how to find the little buggers, and count them, we could really be onto the Secret of Life!

I’ll probably go to hell for this.          MM