OGT DAILY Day Eighty Eight IMMORTALITY

Enceladus and other moons of Jupiter 

The quest for eternal life.  The fountain of youth.   From Herodetus to Ponce de Leon in the 16th century age of exploration many have sought the legendary waters which, restored the aged and weary to vigor.  The diary of one early explorer in the West Indies described a river called Jordan and Ponce de Leon took up that search without much success except for to discover Florida and the American continent.

For me meditation practice is a fountain of youth.  It slows me down and gives me energy and vigor. So does walking which clears my head.   But its probably my violin teacher who sets the best example. At 95 years he plays every day and does scales for hours. You cannot argue with its success in his case. He drives his own car to the Conservatory everyday and has never missed a lesson with me. So playing the violin, I realized just the other day, acts as sort of preventive barrier to aging for me as well. My own personal method of extending my telomeres (the gene function which can prevent aging.)   How does this work?  I have been playing the violin since 4th grade when I heard my teacher, Mrs. Sleigh, playing "My Wild Irish Rose," on the auditorium stage.   While other kids like the trumpet or trombone teachers, I was taken with the violin and started lessons with Mrs. Sleigh in the storage closet outside the 4th grade corridor among the extra black boards, boxes of chalk and erasers.   My parents bought me a $100 violin and I squeaked along (literally for years).
I have never been a natural musician, but I love to play and with every scale I play; every new piece I learn, I get a incrementally better.   But I also know I will never, ever be very good, no matter how much I practice.   Thus I will never really reach any finality with my playing.  It will always be a process of learning - "a work in progress."   That process of always striving keeps me future oriented and in the role of beginner.   How can I get old if I'm always a beginner and a learner?


Speaking of immortality how about those moons of Jupiter? Enceladus and Europa both show evidence of ice formation and plumes of hydrogen that are likely water.   Scientists suspect that these are the perfect conditions for the growth of bacteria and perhaps forms of life similar to earth.

With the horror of the current government's tearing apart of environmental protections for our planet and its blatant war mongering now verging on a nuclear war with Korea, there is something reassuring about the existence of life like ours in the universe.  We may bomb each other into oblivion with "Mother of all Bombs," but life exists beyond our petty ugliness.

Ice plumes on Enceladus