I understand all men are created equal. They are all born with the equal right to be here on earth, no matter where on earth, no matter how they are shaped, their color, their intelligence, or their appearance. It behooves us when we look at any person we see him or her first as a human being—our commonality. It is our commonality because we belong to the same species and because we are all made of the same stardust exploded from some dying stars billions of years ago.
Some years ago we lived on a beach. Every morning I would walk the beach looking at shells, at birds, at shark’s teeth. They were all different. No scallop shell was the same as another. I, as others, was in awe of the variety, the individuality on nature’s shore. But somehow when beach roamers leave the shore, they do not always admire the diversity of nature’s human life. They discriminate among the differences, finding some differences inferior, some superior, having left their awe and their belief in equality at the beach as if humans are not part of the same nature they saw at the shore.
The way we think about the world depends somewhat on our view of reality.
How many realities are there? I suppose it depends on how narrowly one defines reality, but I am up to three. First, there is the reality determined by the senses—what we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell. It is the concrete, objective world before us—what we eat, our shelters, nature’s plants and creatures—it is the world on which we stub our toe. It is the ugliness, the beauty, the frailty and the strength that we see around us. We assume that everyone else senses things in this reality in similar ways, even if some of their senses are better or worse than those of others.
Another reality is the one we create in our minds. We see the objective reality and then we interpret that world according to our inherent nature and our acquired knowledge and experiences. There are as many realities as there are minds. Your world view and mine are different because that information is refracted through the prisms of our minds in different ways. We create metaphors for what we see, comparisons to what we already know. Those metaphors will be different from others at least by nuance because each mind will refract reality on a different slant, depending on past experiences, keenness of mind, and sensitivity.
The third reality, maybe the real reality, is all the shards of the universe created by that long ago bang that continues flying away at speeds faster than a speeding bullet. That reality finds us inconsequential, accidental motes in a continuum speeding ever outward and that all originated in that primal burst of matter that birthed all that exists.
It is not often we think of ourselves in that third reality. We cannot long exist in a reality in which we are meaningless. So we come back to one of the realities in which we have a presence and consequence.
Man seeks meaning for his life. When man finds his existence meaningless, without worth, he has difficulty continuing. He then must create worth. He both procreates and creates—work, service to others, art, assets, fame, thought—something that says, “I’m here. I matter.” Man’s creations are his way of raising his hand in the continuum.
It is not as if the universe is moral—nature in all its intricate marvelousness as well as its perverseness has made everything—suns, planets, humans, rattlesnakes, mosquitos, flowers, hurricanes, rainbows, rain, floods, oxygen, arsenic, good, bad—everything.
Regardless, all life strives to continue—all life has an interest in self-preservation. We call this philosophy “conatus.” Life bursts were it finds itself, whether lilies in a ditch beside the road or dandelions through cracks in the sidewalk, flowers attracting bees to carry its seeds, evolution allowing adaptations to survive nature’s alterations. All life strives to sustain itself.
The world that gives meaning to our lives is the one we make and live in. We are given this gift, this present, life, time, however we think of it when we are born. From the beginning we are looking for the surprise—for a breast, for a thumb, for familiar faces, for happiness, for a thought that pops up like red balloon rising to the clouds, for something that transcends, something that pulls us out of ourselves, lifts us to a higher plane. Surprises are ways of seeing things that bring understanding to us of this universe in which we live. The surprise is like creation. Creation is the meeting of two things. Maybe it is one idea layered over another and maybe layered over another and another. Maybe it’s two things or ideas joined together to make something different from either one. And whatever we create, it is new, it is a surprise to us. Others may have done the same; theirs is theirs, ours is ours.
The surprise is not out in the world, but inside us. It is what we create in our minds that brings wonder to our lives when we look at the world. It’s like a present with the bow on the inside of the box that we untie and find what was there all the time waiting to be opened. For all of mankind the universal surprise is the creation within our own minds—the coming together of understanding, surprise—the metaphors of our existence, that gives us the gift of our personal world, our essence, and gives our life meaning.
Whatever epiphany that’s your surprise, know that it is yours, it is invaluable, it gives your life meaning for you.
Comentarios