Rom-Halan

Today we learned that Leonard Nimoy, best known as Spock in the Star Trek television series and movies, passed away. A coworker brought this tribute to my attention, Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83.

Spock’s not supposed to die. He comes back. This is like hearing that Dr. Seuss has entered the great beyond. It’s not possible– is it?

Many younger people don’t know that Nimoy released a handful of albums containing both pop music and the spoken word. He had a rich, melodious voice, and as a kid I discovered the above track that epitomized Spock’s worldview, Highly Illogical.

For those who don’t know (as the car insurance commercial says, have you been living under a rock?), Spock was a product of a Vulcan (alien) father and human mother. He wrestled with his two worlds, one which was very scientific and– yep– logical, and the other which could be reactionary and emotional.

Perhaps what made the Spock character so popular is that we, part flesh and part spirit, can relate to this conflict. We are not the original design; we are a creation corrupted by our own choices, so we spend our lives warring between what we want to do and what we ought to do. We struggle with two identities, the temporal and the eternal.

C.S. Lewis said, “Humans are amphibians…half spirit and half animal…as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation–the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.”

That’s logical to me. Spock struggled with this and in him we recognized parts of ourselves.

Rest in peace, Leonard Nimoy.

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