Day 16

There seems to be a lot of life happening these days.

We homeschool our kids, and usually we go into the school year well-prepared.  This year?  Not so much.

My wife had foot surgery and is still recovering.  My oldest went off to college -- lots of preparation there, too.

I'm very tired, but probably not as tired as mom.

She learned a new word this week -- nadir.  It's the couple of days during your chemo cycle where you feel your worst.  For her, maybe not too bad.  Very little energy, but otherwise no other side effects.  We can only hope and pray that it continues like this.

I'm looking outside right now at the flowers in the back yard.  The roses are just now ending another cycle of blooms.  It's strange how they are always in sync with each other.  Days to even a couple of weeks with nothing, then suddenly an explosion of color.

Proponents of the theory of evolution often use words that seem to ascribe to all living things some kind of will to live.  Evolution is so often described as "trying" to do this or that.  To my knowledge, the only creature with a real will to live is the human, and that will does little to nothing to make us more genetically fit to survive.

Consciousness, wherein our will resides, is perhaps science's greatest mystery.  My background is physics, and I've never seen among any of the fundamental physical laws anything that accounts for consciousness.  For that matter, I've never seen anything within physics that accounts for the existence of its fundamental laws.  Moreso, it's hard to even argue that the laws of physics even exist.  If so, in what sense?  What about the physical constants, like the speed of light?  We can measure what it is, but in what sense does it exist?  Not light, mind you, but the constant that dictates its speed.

Apparently, there are things that can have a reality but have no physical existence.  Like God, perhaps.