Practice, Practice, Practice

A 76 year old lady gave me those three-word repetitive advice fifteen years ago. It was not, however, something one would consider an earth-shaking counsel or even a quote from a graduation speech.  In fact, it was at the lap pool of a fitness gym. Let me back up.

Less than a year earlier my orthopedic doctor sat me down. He asked, "How much do you really love playing tennis?" I replied, "Very much. I've been playing for over thirty years now and when my right wrist kept getting re-injured I switched to playing lefty." To which he said, "That's not the answer I wanted to hear. If you continue to play and you have another problem with your Achilles tendon, I will operate but not so you can keep playing but just so you can walk." If the doctor was trying to shock me, he succeeded. He went on to explain that playing lefty altered my stance and movement on the court as to severely cause stresses on my tendons, heels and knees which my aging physiology was not accustomed to after years of playing right handed. So he told me to get into an entirely different exercise regimen altogether. The shock lasted only briefly.  By the time I exited the parking lot of the hospital I accepted the fact and felt bitterness only momentarily, which was over by the end of the drive home. It was time to find something else indeed. That was 2004, three years before I retired.

Swimming was going to be the new exercise. There was one problem. As a kid, like all the boys on the island where I grew up we all thought we knew how to swim. I guess we thought correctly if swimming, or a facsimile of it, was negotiating the water between opposite banks of a narrow river or stream or "swimming" from one outrigger canoe to the next, or confidently diving for mussels in six to eight feet of water. And not drown.

The 25 meter pool at the gym, a mere 5 feet of water at its deepest area, is clearly less intimidating than the rushing waters of a flowing river, or wave after wave of sea water with jelly fish and sea snakes and other creatures real or imagined lurking beneath. The 25 meter pool was a piece of cake. Until my first "swim".  I made it to the other end only because it would have been embarrassing to stop midway. My chest was bursting, I was gasping for air, with the ability to speak a near impossibility. Pushing towards the retirement marker was obviously no help. The vitality of youth and the thin frame of an under nourished teenage body were at a vanishing point of the distant past, now only fondly recalled as childhood memories. The "swimming" I knew how was technique-deficient and clearly not suited for back and forth, sustained multiple laps swim.

Months passed and though my swimming may have improved, my technique was barely a notch above the freestyle beginner's level and two laps were a struggle - a lap being one round trip of two lengths of the pool.

One afternoon, there was this lady swimming in one lane next to the one I was about to take. I started and did my two lap routine and stopped to take a breather. She was still swimming, back and forth with one regulated steady pace, one effortless stroke after another. She was not swimming very fast but faster than many others there - clearly faster than I was - and she did it with such grace and control, hardly splashing the water in her wake. It was for another half hour when she finally stopped. I had to ask her how she did it.

Trying not to be too forward I first asked how many laps she did. She did 30 laps. She just swam 1500 meters - one and a half kilometers for those who want to imagine road-walking that. Or, just under a mile. She used to do more but she's not young anymore, she added. Mind you, I was not going to ask her how old she was but then she volunteered it! She was going to be 76 in three months. Water proof make up aside, she didn't look it. It was time to ask her how she does it.

She said, "Sonny, it is practice, practice, practice". She gave me a few more tidbits of advice in the few minutes before she left. She told me that if her swimming looked easy to me, it was because it actually was. She said, "Since you're not likely aiming to be an Olympic caliber swimmer, you should swim like it is the easiest thing to do. You should not be struggling when you swim.  You must feel comfortable with the water. Water should be your friend because it carries a good amount of your weight. Be grateful it is there to help you go there and back and do it many times over and over." She went on to tell me to read a book or two on swimming technique, watch video and always "ask other people you see who swim so effortlessly".

I saw her at the pool a few times more and then never again to this day. I have not become an Olympic caliber swimmer, obviously, but I had since been able to and still do swim 20 laps (one kilometer) continuously, non stop, and do it for about 30 minutes, give or take a minute. I read a couple of books from the public library, borrowed some video, and bought a book on swimming called "Total Immersion" by Terry Loughlin. A great book designed for recreational swimmers mainly or as an exercise regimen. And I did ask other folks, young and old alike, for more tips.

I can't forget what the 76 year old swimmer said about, "Practice, practice, practice" and about the water being there to carry much of our weight.  It is a great metaphor for life I soon realized.

No one, nobody can claim to not have had help from someone, often from many, to help carry part of the burden of life. There was always a "body of water" (of people mostly) that provided us the kind of buoyancy to help us float and swim across from life's one river bank to the other. Parents, relatives, friends, co-workers, bosses, mentors, spiritual advisers, coaches, even total strangers, made up the tributaries and streams that came to be the river of our existence, to help us through the ocean of life. Though not entirely impossible, it is highly unlikely to not have had some water to help any of us float at one point or another. Granted many would and do struggle. Many others make it look easy. 

Practice is the long route from points A to B. It is the anti-shortcut, if ever there is such a thing as a short cut to success. 

"Practice puts brains in your muscles".        -  Sam Snead

Hand eye coordination and muscle memory are the brain's Cliff's Notes gathered over time that made Michael Jordan's jump shots look second nature or typing 70 words a minute by touch or playing the piano or violin seem miraculously uncanny. Practice is the antithesis of luck. 

Famous pianist Vladimir Horowitz said:

Then, no matter at what age, practice doesn't seem to lose its value:

The world's foremost cellist, Pablo Casals, when he was 83 at that time, was asked one day why he continued to practice four to five hours a day. Casals answered, “Because I think I am making progress.”

The difference between excelling and struggling is not merely sheer talent, natural physical characteristics, or intelligence, or even status of wealth and family positions in society. Anyone may have all of those to gain an early advantage but in the long game of life the difference is practice, practice, practice.

Many of us may not achieve extraordinary feats of performance, at least not in the arena of super achievers, but because we practice good behavior, kindness, and fairness to others, we can rightfully claim to have reached a much higher level of human achievement than those who do not. In life's long journey, staying on the right track takes practice, practice, practice. 

P.S. : It's been five years since I posted this and twenty three years since I started swimming laps, I can now swim the 1000 meters non-stop, back and forth in 24-25 minutes.

Life's Conjunctions

Interconnected or random events, planned or haphazardly laid out, are mostly how each of our lives unfurl from one day to the next. If it were a reel of continuous film, each life is a series of conjunctions. Which takes us to, "What is a conjunction?" Well, let's get this out of the way first.

In grammar, a conjunction is:

"a word used to connect clauses or sentences or to coordinate words in the same clause (e.g. and, but, if )".

Everywhere else, a conjunction is defined to be:

"the action or an instance of two or more events or things occurring at the same point in time or space".

I just finished reading a short book that has one very lengthy title, "It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences". 205 pages in paperback makes it a very short book indeed. I think the title is terribly unseemly for a book, but it's more than made up for by its contents. Always looking for ways to improve English writing - my second language - I found it to be an excellent resource on writing in a compact package. I give June Casagrande, the author, two thumbs up. We'll have to say she has the literary license to call her book however she wishes, which was a humorous allusion to one of the most famous opening lines in literature. Charles Dickens, I would surmise that if he were alive today, would not have been amused but "Tale of Two Cities" is unharmed by this and will continue to be a favorite classic for centuries to come.  Let's hope future generations continue to read and people continue to write.

However, this musing, is not about writing. Chapter 2 in the book is titled, "Conjunctions That Kill". As to be expected, from there I meandered into all kinds of things.  

Before we leave the grammar part - I promise we will not linger for far too long - let me explain why I picked conjunctions as a core point from where to meander and launch streams of words in an attempt to merge them into, hopefully, a cohesive river of thoughts. Judge for yourself if I succeeded but please do read on.

Immediately we find that conjunctions are either coordinating or subordinating. One not to outweigh the other but I like coordinating conjunctions because when they're taken out the sentences they connect are independently complete sentences. We know we can live by without conjunctions in how we speak or write. So, why do we need them? Conjunctions are like the carbon atoms wedged within the lattices of malleable soft pure iron. Carbon atoms turn iron into more rigid, stiffer and harder steel. That's what conjunctions do, in a way.

As a memory aid, the book came up with FANBOYS to remember coordinating conjunctions, and they are: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so., which makes them the more special than the subordinating ones, such as, after, although, while, before, if, because, etc. And there are phrases too, such as : as long as, even though, in order that,  whether or not, etc.

That's the grammar part. They actually do have parallel connotations in life, if we look more deeply into, "the action or an instance of two or more events or things occurring at the same point in time or space".

That right there is how our lives get intertwined. That's how our world are connected. Then we find out that the grammar definition of conjunction will not leave us alone.

Coordinating conjunctions connect two phrases or sentences that can stand alone on their own independently.

Take, "I love her." And "I don't understand her". Two independent sentences. With a conjunction, the two sentences could become, "I love her but I don't understand her." Suddenly, a simple three letter conjunction, "but", just added a little drama to what seemed like two ordinary but independently sensible and otherwise common expressions. Right away we want to know more. Why and what is it that you are not able to understand about her, but you love her anyway? Is it about how she says things or how she does anything? That little conjunction made two independent sentences come alive with all kinds of speculation and innuendos. 

How about if we say, "I don't understand her, yet I love her". Now we're talking about how one conjunction shifted the drama from an intriguing declaration to one that is noble and meaningful expression of devotion. Either that or the speaker is actually begging for an answer himself. 

Now you know why I said that life is a series of conjunctions. But there is more. In life, at one point or another, we face subordinating conjunctions. Subordinating does seem to connote the negative but it is more than just that supposition. In this case the conjunction needs a subordinate. The phrase, "While I was sleeping" is one incomplete sentence begging for a subordinate phrase to complete it and make sense of it.  That subordinate conjunction added to what could have been an independent and complete sentence, "I was sleeping" made us want to know more. There are a lot of possibilities. Let's take just one. "While I was sleeping I was awakened by a series of loud knocks on the door that grew louder and louder, followed by muffled but distinctly human voices that clearly came not just from one but likely from several people". That's what subordinating conjunctions do to one ordinary independent sentence. Now, we know, "While I was sleeping" brings on myriad possibilities to follow, from the uneventful to one full of drama.

I made up all those sentences above. In reality, life is full of circumstances similarly arranged. We, whether in family settings or community at large or at school or work or in sports, need coordinating conjunctions - always.  We coordinate because we are not just a single point in space. Nor are we living in a single point in time. One point in space or one instance in time together make up the multiple events of our everyday life and conjunctions make us connect with everything else around us. Our plans, our dreams may begin with a subordinating conjunction and that is what motivates us to complete them. The subordinating conjunction, "when", as in "When I was born" opens up to a world of many possibilities. "If there is justice in this world" is a very loud one even if spoken softly.

On one hand one life's ambition get subordinated by circumstance, as in, "if only I had this or that; if only I was born somewhere else; if only I had the courage", etc. but why don't we coordinate that with, "but I must prevail by sheer will and determination, or "but I will make do as best as I could with where I am right now" or "but I choose not to let fear limit what I am capable of achieving".

Subordinating conjunctions in life have a way to dampen a dream or muzzle a motivated mind. They can also link seemingly two independent tracks or connect unrelated spirits into a partnership of two complementary ideas. To be clear we are now talking about life's conjunctions, away from the grammarian's limiting rules. Society demands conjunctions to link us all together. It also demands that for a merger of ideas to work a long time or go on forever, conjunctions must be color blind and prejudice-free.  History is filled with conjunctions that only worked for a while. Nazism, communism and colonization and subjugation of people, though born out of conjunctions, they lasted only for so long because people were subordinately conjuncted to act against the nature of what is good by one person or groups of people demented by power or driven by horrific intentions.

On the other hand, a chance meeting, a random introduction can sometimes be a life changing coordinating conjunction of two people or groups of individuals drawn together by serendipity. Indeed, life's conjunctions are what makes existence transcend into what could be sublime and meaningful. If we are to review everything that occurred in our lives, from the minute small details to the profoundly earth-shaking events, conjunctions made all those possible. Our family tree, the history of our nations, the fate of a political system, they are all from "the action or an instance of two or more events".

Once we recognize that fact, it will forever make us a little more cognizant, a little more introspective, caring of each moment with and for other people around us. Life's conjunctions are all that define every connection that make up the story of us. Let's be aware, let us make certain that no matter how insignificant or even short lived, each conjunction in our lives occurred either for a reason or meant to be. Make each conjunction one carbon atom added to every soft iron molecule of an ordinary life into a steely resolve to make good one little corner and all that is around it. 

Recycling The Universe

32 years ago, in 1987, was the infamous story of the New York garbage barge - the MOBRO 4000. The town of Islip, New York had run out of landfill area. One enterprising idea was hatched. Load the garbage on a barge and ship it to a North Carolina landfill. 3000 tons of trash were loaded as a "trial run". However, the media and the people of North Carolina got wind of it. Fearing that the trash had hospital waste in it (proven not to be true later), the state refused. The barge was diverted to as far south as Louisiana, then to Mexico, whose navy threatened the barge with artillery. Belize refused it as well. The barge, now internationally the most watched garbage carrier, clearly a phenomenal precursor to reality shows long before such a concept was even a TV idea, continued to find a home for its cargo. Ultimately, it went back to where it came from where the entire trash was incinerated. That barge incident prompted all kinds of laws and regulation on trash disposal. Green Peace, ever mindful of whatever publicity stunt they can get, draped  across the barge a white banner that said, "Next time ... Try Recycling".

I got to thinking one morning as I was pulling the draw strings on the plastic bag of recycled items for the weekly pick up/collection by the local waste management company. Regular trash is collected twice a week. However, on Fridays, two different trucks come: one to collect trash and the other for recycled items. It shows that more trash than recycled items are put out. Or, maybe it is simply for the convenience and well being of households that would rather have standard trash that begin to decompose (and stink) picked up twice more frequently than odor-free and non-decomposing recycled items. We do ours only once weekly - on Fridays - because the composting bin takes a good chunk of the trash - banana peels, fruit and vegetable scraps, etc.

Well and good. Folks feel good to play a role in recycling and composting. Twice weekly, trash disappears at the curb - out of sight, out of mind as soon as the garbage trucks leave. The urban American household goes through this routine every week. Small trash cans from room to room, bathrooms and kitchen, are emptied into a bigger trash can in the back of the house or garage. Once or twice weekly the big trash can/s make a short journey to the curb. By late afternoon, early evening, sometimes the following morning, the trash can/s are trekked back to where they were and the weekly cycle begins again.

This is repeated across the country and in all of the developed "first world" around the globe. The third world countries do their best to deal with it. But the problem is not so trivial, however. Far from it. 

Today, New York (the entire state) gets rid of 7 MOBRO barge worth of compacted garbage everyday. They are trucked hundreds of miles into landfills in Pennsylvania, Virginia, etc. It is a huge business, an enterprise that used to be part of the mob's money making scheme. It is all legit now.  

Then, just recently as a month ago, we have the Canada - Philippines garbage dispute. In 2013-2014 Vancouver shipped 103 shipping-containers worth of supposedly recyclable plastics. It turned out it had household waste in them. It is waiting to be settled.

Landfill. It is today deemed the only "ideal" solution. One New Jersey landfill is now a golf course. Incineration is another while a not so well known idea that is catching on is recovering methane gas from decomposing trash from landfills. It actually works.

The question is this. Do we ever really get rid of anything? Does anything really disappear into nothingness? No. The universe does not allow it. 

The bottom line. Nothing disappears. Tons and tons of plastic that people thought they got rid of by throwing them away are in the oceans, on the beaches, in stomachs of fish, whales and birds. They are on the streets, subway cars, railroad tracks, even on less traveled roads, even in national parks. Outer space is not immune either. Circling around the globe today are space junk traveling at several miles per second, thousands of feet above the atmosphere - leftover material from countless space launches from since more than half a century ago and still going on today.

If you picked it up (no pun intended) from the previous musing I have fervent hopes the readers are by now convinced that nothing really ever gets lost in the universe.  The universe does not throw away anything into nothingness - it is the ultimate recycling agent.
  

Our sun is at least a second generation star. The universe is 13+ billion years old.  Half that time ago our solar system did not exist. Not in its present form of a sun at the center, 8 or 9 planets (we feel bad for Pluto) around it, millions of asteroids, several comets, the Oort Cloud, The Kuiper Belt, etc. All of what we see and know as the Solar System today came from recycled material, from left over space dust to hydrogen gas and other debris.  I will not go nerdy with the readers but suffice it to say that there is a strong theoretical basis for why  our sun came out of recycled material. I am tempted to give a detailed explanation of it but I will muzzle the urge.

Now, to this thought. Long before the word "re-purpose" became a recycling buzz word, the universe had been re-purposing cosmic leftovers and discarded material into new structures, from which came this tiny patch we call our world.

From that little world was created a thinking population that today continues to wonder, to question, to postulate, to be in awe and oblivious at the same time, to introspect but often take things for granted. As part of the total world population, those who recycle are a tiny segment. Much had been said, we've been lectured, we're inundated with calls for action from well meaning activists, politicians and policy makers. We heard it but, alternatively, to balance our perspective, let's look at how explicit or implicit recycling is defined from an unlikely but infrequently visited alternative source these days - The Bible - and its take on recycling:

First, from the creation of man:

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.           Genesis 2:7, KJV (King James Version)

Then, carefully read the verse below:

"If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust."      Job 34:14-15, KJV

And then ... 

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."     
Genesis 3:19, KJV

Widely known and taken as Gospel truth, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is actually nowhere to be found  in the Bible; a poetic  expression perhaps, "Ashes to ashes", but it has no theological basis, where the Scripture is concerned. The Genesis 3:19 quote is the closest we will get.

Now ...

Ground burial is widely accepted today, regardless of religion or culture. Cremation, though still by a small percentage, is accepted as well.

In not so ancient culture in Tibet, Mongolia and parts of China, people, mostly Buddhists practiced what was called, "sky burial".  

"Sky burial is a funeral practice in which a human corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to the elements or to be eaten by scavenging animals, especially carrion birds. It is a specific type of the general practice of excarnation".

The last word is an interesting one, although Google red lined it when I typed it on this essay, but it is likely the opposite of reincarnation.  As we know, the Buddhist religion adheres to it.

The practice is now frowned upon by society in general but it was not too long ago that sky burial was in fact a tourist attraction in some remote places.  There are video and photo images of it online.

There is no definitive explanation for the origin of sky burial. In some cases, it is explained that in the mountainous though tree-less regions of Tibet, where timber is a luxury and the ground too hard to dig up, particularly in winter, the practice was more out of pragmatism.  On the other hand, it is also noted that offering the body of the departed to be consumed by other living creatures is the ultimate act of generosity by the departed that only enhances the process of reincarnation, for those who believe in it.

When all is said and done, but not to be philosophically flippant about it, ground burial achieves the same result where decomposition is the task of other living creatures - microbes, earthworms, and others - which consume the buried body until it is returned to the soil. Dust to dust. 

I know this is not a pleasant topic to be thinking about but it is  meaningful when taken in the context of a far more profound truth. The truth about the impermanence of everything physical. It makes us pause to take stock of the insouciant accumulation of material things or the worship of material possessions to the exclusion,  perhaps, of a far deeper introspection  or search for the meaning of or reason for why we are here.

Read the quote from Genesis 2:7 (above) one more time. Think about it. Each of us will take it differently, ignore it, be indifferent to it, even disagree with it, or have no opinion. Remember though that the fact that we have an opinion, or choose not to have one, makes us individually unique. But there is a common bond. Every living creature has connection, one to the other - from single cell organisms to simple plants like algae and fungi, to termites and small rodents and giant elephants and whales that ultimately lead to us - because one way or the other we are all part of both the natural and spiritual ecology that is the universe.

The universe does not waste anything. Whenever and wherever it can, it will recycle. Whether we are here or not.

The Afterlife

"The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is the belief that the essential part of an individual's identity or the stream of consciousness continues after the death of the physical body".

The question of what happens after death is one subject matter that, like politics and religion, are either avoided at all cost or most fervently discussed among friends depending, and only depending, upon how well their beliefs are aligned; or how, on very rare occasions, their open mindedness lead to extremely tolerant acceptance of each other's opposing views. 

Undeniably, the question of the after life had been asked since humanity acquired the ability to ask, to ponder and to speculate. In fact, long before there were historical records, fossil remains had so much to reveal about how our early ancestors dealt with the subject. There is no question that the mysteries surrounding the afterlife or our ancestors' inability to know or understand what happens after death led to superstition and speculation. Early civilizations - from Old Testament accounts of kings and kingdoms to the days of the Pharaohs, to the Persian empires, the Greeks, the Romans, and all that followed in both Eastern and Western Europe and Asia - produced many different ways of dealing with the subject of mortality, from spiritualism to theology to philosophy.

We find today that much of the questions still remain unanswered. 

From my earlier musing, "Everything happens for a Reason", I wrote about how different major theologies address the subject, so I will not rehash them here.  But there is something intriguing about the quote above on the "afterlife".

A friend, a former co-worker from the old country before we and our families both came to settle here, passed away recently. He was stricken by Parkinson's disease many years ago. The devastatingly downward trajectory of the malady, though slow, affects the person and the family in ways that is tragically heartbreaking. The weariness from the physical deterioration when motor skills gradually diminish is compounded by the frustration when one's speech is affected. The pain from the physical disability is made worse when the affected person gets frustrated from not being able to express oneself, when even the conveyance of an idea is a struggle, the ability to even tell a joke is near impossible. Towards the end the downward physical and mental spiral was a slow and torturous fading away of both mind and body.

One may ask then, what "stream of consciousness continues after the death of the physical body".  This friend used to play (and played well) the highly physical game of basketball, was thoughtful and was a good chess player, and made a good living to support a family and two children. The retirement community he and his wife picked suited them well. Life had all the makings of a comfortable retirement. The sunset of their lives was way far into the horizon, hardly visible and out of mind, as they set to enjoy a long retirement.

Then the diagnosis came. He fought hard with the support of a caring wife and family and he managed well under the circumstances. Then came the wheelchair but that did not deter his will to fight on. From a year ago though  the struggle was gone. The feeding tube was all that sustained an almost unconscious life. The family was long prepared before the sad day. Everyone was at peace during the short vigil, waiting for "God to take him away". 

This adds to the complexity of how to answer the age-old question. Of course, this is not a burden to those who believe that everything is extinguished at the moment of death. Life ended, one's story is finished, there are no sequels, no continuation. To those folks, what I say or think here will have little or no effect whatsoever. There is no need to discuss that either.

We too can avoid discussing theology.  How else then do we address the afterlife? 

Well, if we must,  there is no getting around these: first, life must mean something before we talk about the afterlife; second, why must there be an afterlife; and third, how long is the afterlife? Does it go on forever and ever?

And then we have to ask. Who or what makes all of these possible? And we say, this takes us back to theology or religion or philosophy, or other belief systems, doesn't it?    

The Pew Research Center took a poll last year and found that 90% of Americans believe in "a higher power". However, a much lower percentage (though still a majority, but barely) expressed  belief in God as depicted in the Bible. We can set this aside so as not to get into a debate. Now, we know that of the ninety per cent who believe in the "higher power" there could be a portion of them who would find God or the Universe (as a whole) as interchangeable; that is, God is all of everything we see and observe and that everything that is the universe is God. Still likely to be controversial but we have to start from somewhere that is  as close to neutrality as possible in dealing with the ninety per cent. We will not address the remaining 10 per cent who are either agnostics or atheists.

We start by saying that the Universe/God has sets of rules that are fundamental and beyond dispute. The universe, as an isolated system, whether by creation or by the theory as postulated in the Big Bang origin, maintains that matter and energy are conserved, one can be converted to the other and vice versa, but that nothing is ever lost. That is fundamental to the laws of physics: physical and chemical changes may occur anywhere in the universe but nothing ever gets lost. 

And this brings us to the concept of "stream of consciousness". First we come down a step lower. We begin with "information". We may take it for granted but that is where everything begins. DNA from which life begins is a bundle of information. A cell communicates with other cells through packets of information that it is constantly processing: everything from identifying nutrients that it needs and invaders like bacteria or viruses. Every living thing lives by information.

The painted lady butterfly lays a blue egg no bigger than a pin head. That pin head will hatch into a tiny larva that instinctively dines on the leaf where it was laid, becomes a colorful caterpillar in no time, changes into a chrysalis, pupate and turns into a beautiful butterfly - an exact copy of its mother.  Everything begun as a bundle of information packed into strands of DNA in a tiny blue egg that will complete a life cycle of a year. Then that cycle gets repeated over and over. 

Information, created by the butterfly, by an amoeba, the blue whale and by us all came about by processing matter and energy,  consuming food, converting much of it into flesh and blood and a brain that uses energy in order to process and produce even more information. We know animals remember but we do more than that. We develop self awareness even from an early age, we have a superior intelligence, and a well defined sense of being - a conscience, a set of emotions, an aptitude for morality - and something else we are hard pressed to explain. We feel a connection to people, animals and inanimate objects beyond mere physical stimulus, as if there is much beyond the world of the senses. We feel a stream of consciousness that are often faint, but at times overwhelming. For how do we explain love, acts of goodness, introspection, the capacity to appreciate music, the arts, etc.  Where do all these go upon death? 

The Universe/God does not waste anything. Nothing is ever lost. Not even information! Physics and a very complex mathematics which we will not get into here, speaks to the conservation of information. Suffice it to say that it is at that level of complexity that for the moment is beyond our capacity to understand. But it is also true that just from the principle of the conservation of matter and energy we may gather confidence that perhaps the preservation of information is what the afterlife is all about. We will admit ignorance to what it is exactly that awaits us beyond this physical life but to believe that there is better than 50-50 chance that information is carried over in the form of a stream of consciousness is and should be a safe bet.

We may not know until we know it but what is certain is that the universe does not waste anything. If God is an all knowing God then God must be the Universe.