You might not think you know enough
Don’t let that deter you
It’s all a part of growing up
And we’re all young enough to learn too

And don’t you live life in a rush
The past cannot be returned to
And when you feel like giving up
Remember patience is a virtue

When you fall, try to get up
Have some guts, I’m trying to urge you
Be proud of owning up
The truth will never hurt you

Damien “Jr Gong” Marley, So A Child May Follow

You’re gonna lively up yourself
And don’t say: “No”
You lively up yourself
Big Daddy said so, y’all

Bob “Sr Gong” Marley, Lively Up Yourself

Cuz none of them would like my style
Read more books than the curriculum profile

Said, “Doc Willy please come get your child, cuz he’s writin mad poems and his verses are wild”

Nas, Bridging The Gap

Double the pressure, we nothing but elegant
I am a man who believes in development

Hard faith, had to be prevalent

Hungry as ever, nothing to eat
Nothing to something, I body the beat

Kofi Stone, Busker Flow

The universe works on a math equation
That never even ever really even ends in the end

Infinity spirals out creation
We’re on the tip of its tongue, and it is saying: 

“Well, we ain’t sure where you stand
You ain’t machines and you ain’t land
And the plants and the animals—they are linked
And the plants and the animals eat each other”

Modest Mouse

Darwin, and the stunning biological insights he inspired, revealed a deep continuity among all life on Earth. The physicalist perspective goes further and argues for a rich continuity among everything.

You and I and a rock are all made of electrons, protons, and neutrons. We differ only in how the particles are configured.

The rudimentary arrangement of the particles constituting a rock constrains its behavior, explaining why rocks can’t do much more than sit in place; the complex and exquisitely refined arrangement of the particles constituting you and me opens up a broad behavioral repertoire.

But make no mistake. Fundamentally speaking, we humans are nothing but bags of particles governed by the laws of physics.

This continuity entails that the fate of any material structure from life to planets to stars and beyond, is determined by the durability of its particle arrangement.

The second law of thermodynamics ensures that order ultimately decays to disorder, and so however robust, however resistant to decay, things ultimately fall apart.

On the timescale of eternity, all finite durations, however interminable by human experience, are but a blink of a cosmic eye.

Brian Greene

We’re here for a good time
Not a long time
So have a good time
The sun can’t shine every day

Trooper

Cosmos is within us
We are made of star-stuff
We are a way for the universe to know itself

Carl Sagan

The universe itself may be no more than one gigantic cosmic egg.

And the function of mind? To fertilize that egg.

Creating—who knows what grotesque and Godlike monster.

Best not think about it.

Ed Abbey

Entering dojo, gong sounds…

Ali: Now remember—without realness, we is nothing…

Philomena: Perhaps Day Carts was right, and we think because we are.

Because, if you think about it, we probably are.

And if we aren’t, then maybe it doesn’t matter.

Bill: So Crates said that the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing…

Ted: That’s us, dude!

Universe reverberates: “Ommmmm…”

(Or “Ummmmm…”? Maybe “Hmmmmm…” or “Nomnom…”? Maybe I’m just hungry?

Translation garbled—scholars maintain that the translation was lost eons ago, or perhaps never even existed—bits of noise and staticky background radiation permeate everything everywhere always—or at least since something or somewhen scientists call Big Bang, best they can tell—hard to see into the past, to what happened before, they say—to what happened before Big Bang, for example—scientists say we may never know what happened before—or why, why it happened that way and not some other way—and they say that some of those questions may not even make sense to ask—though they certainly make sense to me—and furthermore, I don’t know about you, but nothing makes me question harder—with more ferocity, with even more recklesser abandon, with all the gloriously heart-felt gut-felt whole-body-felt primal primate savagery of life-or-death do-or-die fight-or-flight fury that flows forth from within a wild animal awakening from a narcotized slumber to find itself caged—than being told “Don’t ask” by a bunch of killjoy scientists—I mean, it’s right up there with being told “You must” by any ‘authority’ (scare quotes) figure—but I digress. So it goes…)

Bill: What should we say?

Ted: Make something up.

Following a pregnant pause—Hoo! Was this pause pregnant. I mean, like pregnant pregnant. “How pregnant was it?!” you ask? So pregnant, it would periodically rest its ballooning baby bump on the edge of the couch to relieve its lower back pain. I mean, this pause was pregnant! “Hot diggity dang—that’s what I call pregnant!”…

Bill: Be excellent to each other…

Ted: And party on dudes!

All join together expansively strumming air guitars.

Mother Earth Goddess Gaia gazes on in cheerful amusement at her creations.

(Or maybe she’s confused? Perhaps placidly disinterested?

Oh my good heavens, doth my squishy optical lens-balls deceiveth me yet again—fallible error-prone portals that they are, so woefully undermatched in staring eye-to-eye with the many deep mysteries of the universe, mysteries destined to remain eternally beyond the pale veil of our shared human frailty…but I digress—doth my eyes deceive or, dareth I speculate, might we not detect even the faintest insinuation of a smile beaming from the face of our cherished Earth Mother as she gazes upon us, her chaotic chance creations—and maybe, just maybe, that smile is not meant in a mocking way?

Doubtful, lens smudged all to shit, but pretty sure that’s just my reflection.)

So it goes…