Nucleus

What a blessed time he has now. Now  he can talk to his children like there were old friends. He sees himself in them, of course; and it feels to him as if he is plumbing his deepest core.

He had many friends back in the time when he was not married or was less married than he is now. But as it is the nature of friendship to grow old with time, he knows he has grown a bit farther from almost everyone except for a small circle.  It was half his fault. They all grew older. They all became adults with families of their own, jobs to keep and dreams to chase .

After a bit of time, the nights they spent together to the wee hours became less and less. Less hours now to spend talking about anything and everything and drinking beer or something a bit stronger. And how they could spend the better part of the week just doing that. Did they realize even then how this could not possibly last? Did they foresee how, in time, these nights would be become absolutely subject to chance?

Chance, as when he was driving one night down an old familiar street and then was suddenly overcome by a sudden urge to piss. Spotting what had been in the old days a favorite watering hole he decided to park the car and use the restroom. The restroom turned out exactly as bad as it always was. He did not mind.

On the way back to his car, he heard old familiar voices. And then, quite to him a happy surprise, he heard familiar voices emanating from a table in the half-dark, the old gang. They called him over. One drink led to another, one conversation leading to the next. It was morning by the time he got home. He was not sorry. Indeed, he felt a sense of how he much he might have lost as he went along in years. He missed them. And exactly to the same extent he missed the old ways. And yet, he remembers how change is truly the stuff of life. He guesses that as they all get older still they might all find themselves back here, back to leading life this way.

But for now, his children and how they had grown old enough so he can carry a conversation with them about mostly anything and everything as he once did with old friends.

As on this day, when after they had driven many kilometers to the countryside, they find themselves around a table waiting for the rest of their family clan to arrive. Their books, sketchpads and laptops, are scattered every which way on the tabletop as if to prepare for possible boredom. He could not help seeing here a profound shift in the years. In the old days, beer, whiskey, etc. to jump start conversations; and now, just books and electronics. Only the end goal remains the same: conversation to while away the time, to spend it, in a way, without the usual obligation to what is necessary and important. Just an easy exchange of words and looks. A small smile here and there, laughter if they are lucky. The mother is listening perhaps half asleep from her bunk a few feet away. They will talk about her. The youngest child tries to entertain himself with his tablet, a forlorn task since he is offline. And then the daughter, now a young woman of fifteen asks: What is the meaning of life? What is the point of all this?

She is taking an online course which includes biology paired with readings on philosophy and classical Greek literature. And so the questions were in a sense understandable. And yet, how may a cynical old father grown up through the period of martial law answer these without preempting the younger person’s potential to search out her truths for herself?

The older man could only resolve to be truthful and never to propose an answer he cannot truly be sure of. The lazy afternoon passed through stories of Gautama, how he had been, literally a boatman, in Hermann Hesse’s account of him. Somehow, the conversation came to nuclear physics.

And how the answers for these questions can only come when the person discovers what is at the nucleus of his or her being. There is, of course, religious text, and indeed, physics and science to help us resolve certain things. But these speak only of the external universe. What of the other universe, the endless space inside us where subatomic particles decide inevitably the architecture of who and what we are? The atomic nucleus decides the number and positions of the electrons orbiting around it. Are we shaped the same way?

In the end, they resolved to ask themselves: What do they find at the nucleus of their being: What lies here? Is it money, power, dreams, art, fame, salvation from sin? They decide it can be anything they put here. And even the most mundane things will do, for as long as they drive them forward and every which way inside the mysterious expanding universe they occupy. A good conversation will do, certainly a memory of words exchanged between them, the new, as well as the oldest friends.