How much does 21 grams weigh?

How many lives do we live? How many times do we die? They say we all lose 21 grams... at the exact moment of our death. Everyone. And how much fits into 21 grams? How much is lost? When do we lose 21 grams? How much goes with them? How much is gained?

How much... is gained?

Twenty-one grams. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a hummingbird. A chocolate bar. How much does 21 grams weigh?


NVDL: What is the meaning of life? Sex and death are two ways to find out. Is life about pleasure or pain? Another way, right now, is to breathe. To glance up at your fingers up close, examining the unique whorls of your fingertips, the way the keratin pushes slowly outward to make harder nails. And breathe, but don't be conscious of the breath, or of any other thought.

When your life is at an end, it is easy to see how precious and finite a moment of life is. The eternity beyond our lives before and after we lived, says something about how small, and magnificent, and vital each life is. It may be a pinprick of time, but if that pinprick, that one shining star in a galaxy is you, well it's a pretty damn special piece of the cosmos. And that's what we are. We're creatures of light, made out of the stuff stars are made of. Atoms pulse inside of us, helixes govern the ebb and flow of the charge of life inside of us.

Youth, beauty, the bright vivid flames of love. The capillaries, fine like cotton, on our ankles, in our ears, the corners of our eyes. Life is an intoxicating mess of flavours and colors, sick and sound.

The breast is a beautiful metaphor for the meaning of life. It is an apparently useless piece of fatty meat. It gives life and nourishment and pleasure and awkwardness. It sags, it can become cancerous. It is pushed, hidden, obsessed over, augmented. It is a simple, swollen bag of skin, culminating in a point, a nub, a darkened spot, a target. It belongs to all and none.

The meaning of life is yours to find, either while you are healthy and wealthy or much later. But it is there each moment of each day, until you are no longer there to know to ponder it. And whether you do or you don't, life goes on, with or without you.

Sean Penn and Naomi Watts in 21 Grams.