The paradox of existence…

Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ehereality, this self –consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew

Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it.

–Ernest Becker, "Denial of Death"