Mountains become boulders, become pebbles, become sand, become dust, become nothing at all. There’s a force in the universe called Entropy that reduces everything to it simplest state and claims that someday everything in the universe will become nothing at all.
But on the other hand, atoms bind together to become matter. Matter coalesces to become a star in whose burning hearth complex elements are fused and formed. The star explodes and spreads it seed into empty space and onto planets. These complex elements bind together in strange and wonderful ways; some becoming you, some becoming me, and some becoming the mote of bacteria that rides the waves of our breath.
We are but of few of the ways that matter is expressing itself in the universe.
On my windowsill sit two forgotten apples; shiny, warm, and moist. The mote of bacteria lands on one and gratefully, it eats. The sweet, warm moistness is blissful abundance. In glorious abandon it feasts, and grows, and multiplies. The meat of the apple becomes the body of the mote. It eats, and it grows, and it multiplies because there is plenty.
But of course, moist becomes dry, food becomes waste, and as the mote has reached the pinnacle of it’s existence, suddenly there isn’t enough. Can it know that there is another apple nearby? Has it grown into something that can overcome this challenge? Can it reach out, with wispy, probing tendrils? Can it creep along the windowsill to the next source? Can it take wing and float a mere few inches?
If it can, it will live and grow even more, reaching unimaginable incarnations of existence. If it cannot it will die. Perhaps the next life form will have better luck. Perhaps the next life form will build cars, and telescopes, and rocketships and be capable of launching itself across any void which confronts it.
… and that’s why we will be going to Mars very soon.
All Rights reserved © 1999 Mark C. Robinson