Cloned
Do you ever wish you could be cloned?
"For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they? As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep." - Job 14:7-12
In today's reading, Job laments the fate of humans, and I guess all other animals, for that matter, since we all die and do not rise up again, the way trees do.
What sprouts from the felled tree is basically the same tree, unlike seedlings which could have different DNA. Like children, seedlings are separate individuals.
But what about clones?
Aren't they separate as well? If I was to be cloned, I wouldn't be me in that clone. It, he, would be himself, right?
What makes us who we are is only partly how we are made. The rest is who we made ourselves to be. What we experience is just as important in our make up as how we started, isn't it?
A clone of me wouldn't be the same me. We would look alike, though one much younger, and I could warn him about the things I did that I regret, so he could make his own mistakes, and that would send him down a different path altogether.
And what if we didn't get along? How would I feel then?
I don't think Job wants to live forever, but he does want to rise up out of his own ashes and feel alive again.
Who wouldn't want that after being beaten down?
We probably would all like to have a do-over now and then, giving us a chance to avoid a mistake or change our path, but do-overs are not easy to come by. Cloning may be a way, but we won't get to experience it for ourselves. The other me is not me.
And maybe that is the lesson here.
We can't be who we are not, so we might as well make the most of who we are.
Besides, who wants to be nurse-maid to a younger self anyway?
More to come...