Who Is Jim?

Here I am, known as Jim, smaller than a speck in this
galaxy, which is smaller than a speck in this universe, a
word that I’m tempted to capitalize because I might
imagine it as god – – God – – much as Spinoza did, if I
understand his ideas correctly.

And here I am, Jim, Old Jim now, having lived so long in comparison to friends and
close family. Jim, not a speck, but a human being who still, as all his life, has
hopes, fears, affections, aversions, and so forth.

But a speck, not yet arrived at what the speck might become, a part-way evolved
animal, called a human, but assuredly not what today’s human will become, if
it has the opportunity to become anything at all.

And Old Jim, who loves, envies, aspires, remembers – – remembers so much. Right
now, not in some passage to some other state, but here and now. Wow!

But Jim is a speck in a speck, perhaps halfway there, or one percent there, or less,
or more. But he is, as a product of those millions and billions of years, not there
yet.

There are neuroscientists who deny the reality of ME, but they err. I AM, as
Descartes proclaimed. Whatever the brain did or does, in what physical (neurological)
fashion I exist, I EXIST. I, ME, as much as Beethoven’s Violin Concerto exists.

We fear that so-and-so is going to set us back, crush our nation, endanger our very
existence as humans. Perhaps, but that is small potatoes, because what is damaged
is just on the way to something that will return to being on the way to something.

Old Jim doesn’t want anything to do with that. He’s here. Right now. He cares about
the here and how, not of some presumed events in some indeterminant future in
some speck – – or speck of a speck. Here. Now.