It’s now fall, and trees have begun to shed their leaves. Outside my balcony I see a centipede crawling along a barren branch, unaware that his world is changing. One lone leaf awaits him at the end of his journey, though its promise of food may not await his too slow progress before the leaf succumbs to its fate. As I meditate on this bug’s mortal journey, his legs busily pushing him forward, I realize that he must be unaware how insulated his struggle is in the context of the large tree that he inhabits. There are still many edible leaves there that could reward his efforts and perhaps extend his life. But his time is short; his travel, limited; and spring is another lifetime away from his unassuming existence. Nature’s cycle holds all life in its balance like the very seasons by which we measure time’s progress. This little bug lives in but a singular moment, plying his lonely trek on a branch while the world spins its broad path through time and space, seemingly without regard for his tryst with survival.

Like the centipede, there is the same immediacy to my world and to my struggles to survive in it. I breathe the same air, and my legs carry me over a very particular piece of the continent. But, in the words of John Donne, I sense I am indeed “a part of the main.” I am aware that I was not born into this world, but out of it. When I raise my eyes above the trees, I can see a firmament seeded with the substances that formed the biosphere in which I live and out of which my species evolved. Nevertheless, my individual lifetime does not differ from that centipede’s. For we are both bound within the confines of our time and the particular space we inhabit. Only my awareness differentiates me and my fellow human beings from that centipede.

Of course, this awareness is not bounded, but open-ended; for it borders on the edge of mysteries that science will forever attempt to unravel. Language provides signs and symbols in which to house my thoughts. But these thoughts are mere representations of what each individual experiences. The beauty of language is that it gives us the ability to recreate in each of us the experience of another. This re-creation would not be possible if there was not a core existence that each of us manifests and reflects in our communication. We may be like that centipede on a limb, but we live in an all-encompassing world of a more general awareness: we touch the heavens and live in eternity.