Rainbow

If you look closely you will see it is a double...

A Day in the Life

Epilogue
The mayfly’s body joined a myriad of others of its kind in their return journey. Once beneath the surface the decomposition began the once delicate form breaking down into its component parts – chitin, protein and cellular structures returning to their component elements. Fish claimed some of the parts, passing them up the food chain. Other parts settled on the bed of the river and became food for those organisms that would later be consumed by young mayfly nymphs. Nothing wasted. Everything transformed. On the bottom were the crevices that protected the newly lain eggs. Complex processes had already begun in these microscopic spheres. Cell division and differentiation, the whole complex process of creating new life from the template of the old.

Weeks later these same eggs would hatch into nymphs, translucent specks so small as to be almost invisible immediately beginning to feed and grow. These nymphs would spend months, years in some species, in this underwater existence. They would regularly moult as they increase in size oblivious to the brief future aerial existence that awaited them. The river maintained its timeless flow, following the seasons from year to year. The heat of summer, making way for the autumn coolness, winter ice, and the spring renewal. The cyclic rhythm continuing uninterrupted as it had for its millions of years before humans had given the cycles names. The arrival of the next summer would see a new generation of mayflies emerging from the water’s surface breaking into the sunlight. Among this emergence the descendants of a particular mayfly whose single day had encompassed an awareness unique to itself. New beings who would dance, mate, explore, and perhaps, in their turn, contemplate the stars.

They too would, in human terms, live only for a day. But, measured in terms of experience, fulfilment of purpose, in the appreciation of existence itself, their live would be as complete as any that had ever lived. For, in the end, it is less about the duration, and more about the depth, of living that brings meaning to existence. Can a single day fully inhabited not contain eternity?

Authors Note
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