Connections 

 

Im reading another book about NDE's ie those who have died and been brought back to life.  A common phenomenon that is shared by death travellers is their belief that everything is connected

 

As one death traveller describes it, we are all stardust and this isn’t some airy-fairy concept, we are actually all made of stardust, which means that we are made up of the same matter as the sun, the stars and the galaxies around us.

 

Essentially, all the beauty and power that you see out there in the universe also lives within you and is you. She goes on to say that the issues in life are so small compared to the greatness that is inside you.

 

Annoyingly many of these travellers are not able to better explain the feeling that we are all connected once they return.  You get the sense that it won’t make any meaningful sense on this side of the divide.

 

Greg and I choose audio books to listen to together when we are travelling in the same vehicle.  We have listened to all the Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter Books both read by the incredible Stephen Fry as well as many others. At the moment we are in the midst of The Short History of nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

 

Today he was introducing atoms and describing how and when they were discovered.  As you know they are completely naked to the human eye and yet they make up literally everything including us. 

 

Atoms that touched King David are still floating about and I could be lucky enough to have some of his fly my way.  I could also have a some of Atilla the Hun's atoms visit me so the pendulum swings both ways.  However bottom line is that we are all connected by this one thing and I am sure there are many other things that connect us to each other and the world around us that we are unaware of.

 

Finally, you know me and a good story – This one came up during today’s drive.  As you probably know Madame Curie conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.  What you may not know is this – that her notebooks and papers are still radioactive. 

 

Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anaemia (likely due to so much radiation exposure from her work with radium). Marie's notebooks are still stored in lead-lined boxes in France, as they were so contaminated with radium, they're radioactive and will be for many years to come.  I was intrigued. 

 

I then googled how long her notebooks will continue to be radioactive and this was the response.

 

Curie's notebooks contain radium (Ra-226) which has a half-life of approximately 1,577 years. This means that 50 percent of the amount of this element breaks down (decays) in approximately 1,600 years

 

I might just wait for the audiobook 😊