Have you ever been walking along on a fairly quiet day and suddenly heard the squawking of a flock of geese and you looked up at them and saw their V-shaped flight pattern, and you wondered so many things about what you were seeing? You wonder why that one goose is the “point” man and how did he get elected for that position, and what are they communicating to each other with all that squawking. Are some of them complaining about the long trip, or saying “slow down, I can’t keep up”, or they need to stop and rest and perhaps take a break for something to eat?
Well, that kind of wondering, pondering, trying to figure out what things are all about is what this blog is about. From the time I was very young I’ve been fascinated with so many aspects of life. Why are we here? How did we get here? How do things work? Why do people behave the way they do? Is there life after death? How can there exist so many religions with each one of them believing that theirs is the only truth and that all others will not be allowed in the afterlife? How can God love us all, but will burn us in hell forever if we don’t get down on our knees and turn our lives over to Jesus and the doctrines of the church. My mother took us every Sunday to the Church of the Nazarene. One church doctrine was that dancing was sinful, and yet, starting in the sixth grade, our school sponsored dances a couple times a year and I so wanted to dance. By age 14, I was a very confused young man, depressed and frustrated by endless thinking about why I was unable to just follow along. I tried to be “born again” that summer and just couldn’t make it work. It was that summer that I made the decision.
I decided to go my own way. Mrs. Todd, my English teacher had certain favorite poets and authors that she referred to in her lectures that had written compelling advice. One of them was William Ernest Henley. Two lines from his poem, Invictus, have stuck with me throughout my life: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”. From then on, I felt guilt free to learn about other theories and opinions about life and nature and the universe, and to come up with my own opinions of how things are. And through it all, I have only one conclusion and it is this. We don’t know, we can never know. The best we can do is keep looking, thinking, and studying, and while doing so, have no fear, everything is going to be OK.
So this blog is simply a place for me to put my thoughts down on “paper”. A few years ago I came to a conclusion that we’re deluged every day with paradoxical situations and each one usually carries along some irony. A quick example is the idea of being truthful at all times. It can’t be done. It shouldn’t be done! People will be hurt, as in “Do these pants make me look fat?”…….”No, it’s not the pants.” The idea of wanting to always be truthful, but can’t, leads to both paradox and irony. As I thought more about it, I came to my theory that virtually everything in life leads to either paradox or irony. The “truth/polite lie” issue is a soft paradox. An example of a brick wall paradox is death. We can never know what death is, even by dying, because knowing requires being alive. The potential irony in death is that when we do pass over, we may be surprised to find that the Church of the Nazarene had it right and William Ernest Henley was wrong, you are not the master of your fate nor the captain of your soul. No dancing allowed and no coffee either.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading some of these ponderings half as much as I am having writing them.