'"What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly." -Lao Tzu

While spending over 24 hours in bed temporarily incapacitated by flu, food poisoning, or heat exhaustion (as if labeling my affliction would make me feel better), I've had a lot of time to ponder pain and my ability to endure suffering. I had actually thought about playing some golf before this, but what the heck, it would seem  more fun to contemplate impermanence while perched on the toilet every 30 minutes! Today I'm still achy, have little to no energy, but at least I get a chance to catch up on some episodes of TEDtalks.

And how fitting an episode for me to view: "Jae Rhim Lee: My Mushroom Burial Suit." She asks the question, "what if, one day, our corpses could be eaten and decomposed by edible mushrooms?"

"If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away. Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked. Lying on the floor, I've come undone" -from the song "Undone" by Weezer

Like the song points out, I might be losing it, but enjoy watching as my insanity unfolds if you please. In the episode, Jae Rhim Lee opens the talk discussing the current methods of burial and cremation. She points out there are over 5,000 toxins stored in the human body. The two most popular forms for treating exhausted human bodies both have major environmental effects. 

As a rapidly growing society do we not have some obligation to recycle? If we won't recycle used body parts, will we even consider recycling glass bottles and cans? You don't still throw old batteries in the waste bin do you? Not to worry, I share a similar ignorant belief about recycling, since I thought my personal preference of cremation would be most helpful to the environment. Wrong again.

This got me thinking about our obvious fascination with other people's deaths (evident in violent movies, video games and nightly news clips). Yet we remain less than objective when discussing our wasteful methods of burial in tombs that never decompose, or incineration, which emits toxins into air, land and water.

The inability to separate our "selves" from this vehicle its traveling in (the physical body) will surely lead to the detriment of the Earth. How many human corpse landfills (cemeteries) can we afford to maintain on this planet? And at what costs will the dead infect the living beings? Obviously we're not just talking about human beings either. I've heard it said that we are the only species of animal on the planet who thinks it's OK to shit in the watering hole.

"We're not even the captains of the spaceship. We're just the passengers, watching and consuming. The crew is the insects and the microbes and the other creatures, doing what they do to keep the ship functioning. And right now we're killing off the essential crew, one by one." -Paul Watson, Founder and President, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Captain Watson took a lot of flak in recent years when he said that earthworms were more valuable than humans. But it's a fact that earthworms will survive without humans. Humans could not live without earthworms.

If we won't even consider allowing our meaningless corpses to decompose naturally (via the assistance of mushrooms) after we're no longer walking upright on this planet, what else won't we do to remove our carbon footprints while we're still here?

Food for thought if you will,
Carl

PS- this is probably the most scattered post yet, but it accurately reflects how I'm feeling right now, and I needed some exercise in writing today. God knows I couldn't do ten push-ups at the moment!