☀️ The Sun and the Shadow: A Biological Machine of Memory
I walk home, and the air is cool, yet my path is a constant dance between light and dark. One moment, the sun strikes me, and I feel a joyful warmth; the next, I step into a shadow, and the cold bites sharply. This is the oldest rhythm of life—the shadow and the sun—a constant shift from good to solas (solace). The night falls, but without fail, the morning rises. Even when the sun hides behind the clouds, it always reappears, smiling and bright, as if it were the first dawn.
They say you cannot stare directly into the sun. But in this post, you can.
I am neither a poet nor a writer; I am merely an ordinary mortal. Yet, what will remain is what I have done and what I have said during my time on this earth. We, as biological human beings, are just a fleeting moment in the life of this planet. The Earth has been here for eons and will be here long after we are gone. We are here to live this brief moment. This moment is a gift, and we must be conscious that it is only transient. Many others before us and many after us have lived and will live the moments of their lives. We have lived these, and we should be grateful that we remain in this immense, relentless flux of existence.
The only intellect we currently know that understands the future, the present, and the past as it truly was, is within us. Although the past is often torn by pain, tears, and suffering—things we refuse to remember—it also holds delightful moments of childhood we cherish. But the refusal to recall the ugly things, the painful things, sometimes causes us, as thinking people, to refuse the beautiful things too.
We are, in effect, a biological machine. We function simply: we eat food and drink water—that is our fuel. Just like a machine that requires oil and gasoline to run, we must eat and drink to move forward. But there are more intense, minor elements that fuel us, too: We must remember the awkward, the difficult moments, even those from primary school, and especially those of deep loss.
I am writing this almost seven days after my mother’s funeral. It is a raw prescription. I must remember this pain, but I also remember the beautiful moments—like when I was small, and my greatest joy was to be held close in her arms.
Now that she has departed further away, I understand for the first time what it means to be without a parent. Though I lost my father when I was only one year old, that was an unconscious loss; I cannot speak of it because I have no conscious memory of the feeling. But losing my mother now is different.
I trust you will believe that the story I share here is 100% real. If you choose to follow the narrative of my life on this blog, I promise to express myself with 99% reality, though, of course, a storyteller must craft the journey slightly. You must understand that we cannot always speak plainly; sometimes, we need a rhyme, a rhythm, for the truth to carry the weight of the sorrow.
Thank you for being here and for reading this far.
Erik Pytar
The Daily Something of Life
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