If you cut off your finger and bury it in a house plant, where your finger then becomes food for the plant, are you alive in the plant as well as in your own body? What if you don't even cut off your finger, what if you just count the millions of atoms you exhale in each cycle of your breath and pair them with the atoms shed from your skin, on a simple walk across your lawn, or a walk in a park. All of those atoms are being committed back to the environment, with some becoming food for the blades of grass. Are you alive in your body, and in each blade of grass?

Not all atoms from which we are made give us our sense of self. Only a small amount of the atoms that form our bodies exist in the central structure where consciousness occurs--our brain. Consciousness isn't found in any one of the individual atoms, but in the collective structures formed by those atoms. As these structures deteriorate, so does consciousness and thusly, sense of self.

Again, you (as in sense of self) are not the atoms, "you" are the result of structures created by atoms. No structure, no you. You will not live on as a tree because you become tree food. Your atoms, however, will persist for some time--think in frames of billions of universe life times.

In my opinion, instead of worrying about whether or not you will live on as a tree-being, make the most of this short time line where some atoms are currently arranged in a fashion that has produced Enza. I suggest you look at the people you love, the people you hate and realize they are all temporary formations--learn to love them more, or hate them less--whatever the case may be.