I and You: Unique and the Same

“The human brain is characterized by some 10 to the 13th power of synapses.  Thus the number of different states of a human brain is 2 [the binary digit or bit] raised to this power—i.e., multiplied by itself ten trillion times.  This is an unimaginably large number, far greater, for example, than the total number of elementary particles (electrons and protons) in the entire universe….  It is because of this immense number of functionally different configurations of the human brain that no two humans, even identical twins raised together, can ever be really very much alike.  These enormous numbers may also explain something of the unpredictability of human behavior and those moments when we surprise even ourselves by what we do.  Indeed, in the face of these numbers the wonder is that there are any regularities at all in human behavior.  …From this perspective, each human being is truly rare and different and the sanctity of individual human lives is a plausible ethical consequence.”  --Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden

I will never be repeated.  There will never be another me.
Long ago I knew that this was true.  And I also knew,
That there will never be another you.

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In so many ways, we are all exactly the same.
We each are born from, and with, the same passion’s flame;
We each go through the gamut of human emotion:
Love, dislike or hate, fear, hope, attraction, revulsion;
And our many other emotions, subtle and gross.
We all enjoy pleasure, and endure pain;
We all possess and express a major monument, or at least a modicum, of mind;
And the fact that loss soon follows gain, all of us all too soon must find.
We all have special friendships, and those we love the most;
Friends and loved ones we hold in our hearts most close.
May God save us all, if God loves at all; may no one vanish like a ghost.

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We all enjoy great gifts of grace; and we suffer more than anyone deserves.
But there is great injustice and grossly wrong uneven distribution
Of the curses and the blessings of human being.
Some are blind, though most are seeing;
Some are deaf, while most can hear.
Some live in gross poverty, denied human dignity and healthy life’s necessity;
Others have more money than a century of spending could make disappear.
Some have many and major abilities; while some have few or none of these.
Some have almost everything, and some have nearly nothing.
Some give nothing, while others make massive contribution.
Some live far beyond our natural lifespan; some lose life early to a terrible thief.
But even the longest human life, in pure terms of time, is pathetically brief.
And some, like me, have had to be like all of these, at different times:
Beneficiary of cosmic bountiful blessings; victim of arbitrary cosmic crimes;
Sometimes having nothing to give; and sometimes overflowing with giving;
But always grateful for my life, and always loving living.

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We each have the same twelve pairs of cranial nerves;
We see and hear and feel and taste and smell the world,
Re-creating it uniquely within ourselves, where each one of us is I.
Almost all of us want to live; nearly none of us want to die.
How did the world, how did the diversity of life, get here?  I wish I could know. 
Whether we evolved somehow blindly through an immense flow of time’s sands,
Or whether we were in some way shaped and helped by powerful divine hands,
I do not know.  I cannot know.  Nor can you know, even if you think you do.

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Deep philosophy, long ago, let me know that this is so:
“The difference between an ordinary truth and a great truth is this:
The opposite of an ordinary truth is false;
The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
The present subject falls into that category,
How each of us is absolutely unique, streaming in time, a solitary special story;
Yet we are all absolutely the same, from one perspective—this:
We all exist in God’s image: each is the same I am, magically making synthesis
Of our minds with the universe, miraculously taking and making the world.

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Knowing the similar structures and yet infinite differences in our brains,
We are so different in our branchings out; at the core, fundamentally the same.
We have the same basic life-brightness and the same ultimate life-bleakness.
We ought to care about each other,
Because we are all—in deepest truth—sister and brother.

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In the beginning, we are the same life, we are the same I;
In the end, we go into the same death; we all must leave life and die.
This alone should teach us to love each other, and to help each other,
Sharing in our few brief days—
Our days of life that, so full—so winning and fruitful—
And so empty—so losing and futile—
All fleetly fly.

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Finally, we are the same flesh, brought into being by our nearly identical DNA;
We are the same, yet special, brain—generating the same, yet unique mind.
We all are gifted, each with our special sight and insight;
And, looking to the ultimates and imponderables, we are all the same: all blind.

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Just as I wish I could keep on walking in the sunshine of day,
And continue to marvel at the moon and stars in the wonder-whispering night,
I wish that we all could keep living, and did not have to pay
The “debt we never did contract, and cannot answer”—Khayyam got that right.

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I wish that no one ever had to die; both no one I love, and none I never knew;
I wish that somehow, no one had ever died;
And I hope that, somehow, no one must remain forever dead.
I believe that Plato was right when he said:
“Love is the desire to make immortal.”

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But unlike for Plato, who thought mere cogitation alone could capture reality,
For me, science and reason and logic exhaust our full epistemological scope;
Dreams and fantasy are beautiful and wonderful; they bless even my curse;
Imagination is often productive of possibilities, hypotheses, still to be verified;
But as important as dreams, fantasy, and imagination are, on life’s time-slide,
They cannot verify one thing as true or false, not in life, nor about the universe.
So I cannot believe absolutely in the truth of any proposed ultimate destiny;
I can only fear and hope.

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Beyond science and reason and logic, I can only speculate and guess;
So I believe it highly unlikely the sunburst-brilliant, all-seeing mind of God—
Who, if He exists, gave us existence; and made—in the image of His I am—
Our little model of God’s mind, the reality-reading, life-loving human mind—
So unlikely that God’s mind would approve of, let alone demand, blind faith.
I will stay true to nature’s, or God’s—whichever it is—gift of the human mind;
And I will say I know, only what I know is so.
And when I can only guess and estimate, I will be honest to say I do not know.
This is what I hope God would want us to do, in this world in which we grope.
May God save us all, and not let us stay in the dust; nor save only a pitiful few.
As I love myself, I also love you.

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The synaptic versatility in our human brain is two, multiplied by itself
Ten trillion times; a vastly great number;
Greater than the total number of elementary particles in the entire universe.
Yet our brain has an even greater number of faster and subtler microcircuits.
There is no richer wealth or pelf, than our magnificent human mind:
The grand core of significant reality: the true cosmic center, our wondrous self.

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But how brutal and bloody has been so much of the history of humankind!
So much deliberately inflicted death and pain!
Man’s inhumanity to man must break the heart of any human being who feels.
More numerous than all the particles in the universe, the bits in our brain
Have raised us high—to be, as Plotinus said, midway between beasts and gods;
Yet how few humans in history have been godlike good, or even humane.
So many, hordes of humans, have behaved like beasts, and acted even worse.
How can this be?  Where in them was the sympathy-capable subtlety,
Where was the vast mental power of all those microcircuits and synapses?
How could they turn mirror-like souls, should-be beneficiaries, into victims.
Each precious person, within himself or herself  like the wonder-filled universe;
Yet so many human beings—like me, like you—maimed, tortured, and killed.
Each time the light of a human life is snuffed out—
Whenever a human heart is fatally stilled—
It is the end of the world: it is just as if the entire universe collapses.

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As to how magnificent we really are,
Most of us have been ignorant and blind.
Tragically, throughout history:
Because we did not know how wonderful we are,
We became terrible.

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I am you to you; and you are you to me;
Yet we each inside ourselves are I.
“Love your fellow human as yourself” holds the heart of true humanity.
God help us all, we cannot help but be
The center of the universe we see.
We are at the core the same, despite all differences and multiplicity.
The world always crashes and ends in the darkest tragedy,
Every time a being, feeling-thinking I, must die.

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The great truth is this:
We are all in many ways different; yet we are all very much the same.
It is as if there were one being, expressible in an infinite number of ways.
It is as if each of us were the same human being,
Absolutely the same at the core, in being I:
This being I began long ago, in the draped deeps of the present-producing past,
Either blindly born, or sparked by divinely intervening power—
Which then imparted God’s own image of the great I am—
Set to replicating endlessly the same I-being,
Multiplying one mind into many minds,
Each the same in being mind; yet each as special, as also vast:
Each mind expressed uniquely with both sameness and with differences.
Each replicated as if the one and only feeling, dreaming, thinking I:
On one hand, absolutely the same; on the other hand, absolutely unique.

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This is the great truth:
We are all in many ways the same; yet we are all very much different.
In no sense are we more the same than so:
In our fleet few days that fly;
In our heart that feels it cannot die;
In our miraculous world-holding I;
Our magical world-making I:
And we are the same in each having our one-time-only human uniqueness.
I know there will never be another you, that with your life’s eyes can see.
And certainly, I know:
I will never be repeated.  There will never be another me.

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Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Copyright (C) 2011 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved
(I still copyright my poems, for my estate)