What gives us the right to be alive-to live, to breathe, to sing, to dance, to write, to play, to feel-to be human? What gives us the will to look down upon each other with contempt, or to praise one another with love? Who says that we may speak our minds, or that our minds may even speak? Who says that we may have a mind to drive our bodies with grace and agility? What makes us believe that our values, beliefs, judgements, ideas, opinions, perspectives, aspirations, successes, emotions, and brilliance have substance? What makes us even think that we may possess brilliance, or that what we call originality and genius is indeed our possession or creation whatsoever?

What gives us the assurance that we can rule this planet with our finite knowledge and perceived wisdom? Even now as I write, what tells me that these words truly have meaning? What tells one who may be reading this that these words truly have meaning? What tells my sub consciousness to tell my conscious self to live; what gives me the right to be human?

If we were to take a moment of introspection to separate our minds from our bodies to ask ourselves why must we be alive to live, why must we identity our identity-and to question whether or not we truly have an identity, and to introspect on our introspection, what would our answers be? If we were to gaze upon our appearance in the mirror and look deeply into our eyes as if from the eyes of another, would we question our existence? Our own self? Would we see what a god would see, but perhaps only a fraction? Could we possibly even manage to attain that?

Within the duration of this moment, this fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, would we realize that we are almost meaningless as merely humans in our humanity? Would we acknowledge the notion that we are not defined by how we define ourselves, and that we are defined not by ourselves, but by some transcendent force that has not quite yet been sensed by our laws of physics-some transcendence that is at work? And might this transcendence be the sheer fact that there is no force at work at all besides that of unpredictability? That the very fact that we exist is due to a random act of randomness? And might this transcendent force that has not been, or perhaps cannot ever be, picked up by our powerfully logical quantum laws be the very randomness that has created us and the universe? Ironic, isn't it?

Would we be willing to accept, within this flicker of an instant before the realization once more vanishes just beyond our cognitive reach, that this transcendence gives us a translucent understanding of why we are alive, and gives us permission to live, and unconsciously, we know that we have guidance in all that we do. And this guidance is our free will, and our free will is permissible by this transcendent force. Randomness.

In this moment, we are enlightened, but as the moment passes, we are once more shadowed in ignorance and obliviousness; living on, arrogantly protesting that we are independent and superior in our being. Neglecting to acknowledge that we have permission to live. And this permission is the very fact that we are alive to declare so.