It is oft repeated that we create ownership of our intentions, conveniently allowing ourselves to be governed by our perceptions. Depending upon the resolve, the result is aspiration, hope or a dream. But never authenticity, merely “conception formed by directing the mind towards an object”. We are forced to acknowledge the conflicting fortuity of life. Yet whatever the inescapable circumstances, we are nonetheless enabled to rethink the world, to concoct a collection of ingredients to replenish our mold.

The competition for legitimacy is strangely entangled in our history and make-up. We bear the burden of our past. There is no relief from the exigencies of time; instead, we are bound to re-interpret self-awareness and personal expression. Generally speaking resistance is futile; the door is already closed. Furthermore the transparency of life reminds us to respond critically; that is, instinctively not notionally. Life is rudimentary. Some may even say binary. I prefer simple. It is for example no accident that fledglings chirp to be fed. It is this primacy which predicts the result. Similarly we’re confronted with changing imperatives, the response to which will manifest the clarity or murkiness of our activity. Intentions may occasionally need to be revived.

Grasping at the fleeting straws of life is by some measure doomed. The imminent ending is clear. Yet the perpetual necessity of growth is equally sustainable. While I will not pretend to calculate whether energy can be neither created nor destroyed, I willingly accept the transition of life (whatever its refinement) in mutable forms.

The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be conserved over time. In the case of a closed system, the principle says that the total amount of energy within the system can only be changed through energy entering or leaving the system. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. For instance, chemical energy is converted to kinetic energy when a stick of dynamite explodes. If one adds up all forms of energy that were released in the explosion, such as the kinetic energy and potential energy of the pieces, as well as heat and sound, one will get the exact decrease of chemical energy in the combustion of the dynamite.

The philosophy of change or intention is not easily captured.

Ancient philosophers as far back as Thales of Miletus c. 550 BCE had inklings of the conservation of some underlying substance of which everything is made. However, there is no particular reason to identify their theories with what we know today as “mass-energy” (for example, Thales thought it was water). Empedocles (490–430 BCE) wrote that in his universal system, composed of four roots (earth, air, water, fire), “nothing comes to be or perishes”; instead, these elements suffer continual rearrangement. Epicurus (c. 350 BCE) on the other hand believed everything in the universe to be composed of indivisible units of matter—the ancient precursor to ‘atoms’—and he too had some idea of the necessity of conservation, stating that “the sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain.”

I can feel it coming back again
Like a rolling thunder chasing the wind
Forces pulling from the center of the Earth again
I can feel it

Songwriters:
Edward Joel Kowalczyk / Patrick Dahlheimer / Chad Alan Gracey / Chad David Taylor
Lightning Crashes lyrics © Mucho Loco Music Ltd.

Frontman Ed Kowalczyk of the rock band Live wrote “Lightning Crashes” in 1993. Inspired by the tragic death of a 19-year-old friend who was killed by a drunk driver, the song is a meditation on the cycle of life, death, and the transference of energy from those leaving to those arriving.