"A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."

What do we carry with us on this mortal coil? Tracy uses the movie The Last Samurai to jump start her meditations on life and death — what we take with us and what we leave behind.

Tonight we watched The Last Samurai. I have seen snippets of it here and there, but never the full movie. I loved it. Stellar, actually and it really gave me pause for thought. It made me think about all of the things that you actually carry within you as a human. Your strengths, weaknesses, humility, power, deference, grace, memories, choices-good and bad, honor, dishonor, determination, confusion, love, hate, forgiveness, revenge, regret, desire, pain, love, joy...etc. All the things that imprint and mold who we are, the choices we make or don't make that develop our thoughts, ideas, personalities.

It made me think about the passing of time, the ticks that count off moments in history, the changing from the old guard to the new. So often the changes that takes place in history are purely a matter of timing, and often perspective. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes the changing is neither good nor bad, righteous nor evil...but just one choice over another during that particular moment in time.

The changing of this guard is so often melancholic but it can also be beautiful — something is dying and something is being born, and with every death there is loss, just as with every birth there is something bright and new. The thoughts and ideas that surround it definitely cause a very human awareness in me...a knowledge that things have always been and always will be...whatever form it is that history and future history may take. My place in the universe feels like a bright little speck among so many other bright little specks.

Anyway...another battery of late night musings. 

Originally posted on Tracy's Blog October 30, 2008