Brain Food #689
The unique nature of living
Thoughts of the day
Good morning, and happy Friday. Today’s Brain Food continues to follow yesterday’s narrative, around how easy it can be to forget what it truly means to be alive.
Consciousness remains a lottery, an unsolved mystery. But some mysteries do not need to be solved (though such is the nature of human curiosity, that we will continue to try and unravel it).
Things could always be better. We could be better. Sometimes, all we need is a reminder of how precious life is at this very moment, and that we have been given ourselves, whatever that entails, to experience it.
Oliver Sacks’ thoughts on the unique nature of each human, and the unique nature of living:
“There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
Thank you for reading today’s Brain Food. Brain Food is a short daily newsletter that aims to make you think every day, without taking up too much of your time. If you know someone who would like it, why not forward it to them? Brain Food is, after all, alive thanks to you, its readers.