“Memento mori: remember, you will die.”

I once found this idea terrifying, and frankly, could not find much comfort or meaning in the sentiment. Seeing a few loved ones pass on, I found it hard to find peace. Looking into the void of death and not really knowing what comes next filled me with hopelessness.

Genesis says, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” What is the meaning in that?

The book Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, was something that gave me comfort at a time of life many years ago when I was struggling with that question. Sagan said “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.”

Another great human being, Neil DeGrasse Tyson said “We are all connected: to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

That is where I have found meaning and comfort: not in some abstract idea of a God far away from us, but in our connection to everyone and everything else that is or has ever been.

-Robyn Hyden