I wonder what's going on in Chad. Chad is a country in Africa east of Niger, west of Sudan, south of Libya, and north of Central African Republic. I've never heard of Chad before, but I have this big map of the world on the wall and I just found it. Hi Chad!
Have you ever thought about how much of the world you've never seen? Even if you're well-traveled, you've still probably only seen the cities and the roads, not the large uninhabited expanses of land. And then let's not forget the ocean. And the solid matter of the earth that you can't get inside because it's solid and you're solid and two solid things can't occupy the same place at the same time. The universe is overwhelming. At times I feel that there are too many smells for me to smell. There are so many possible arrangements of light information. I'm not sure if "light information" is a real scientific term, but I mean to say, there's so many possible combinations of visual stimuli that you can't see it all. You can't smell it all. Or feel it all.
The question is, does the realization of the grandeur of the universe make you feel overwhelmed, or does it make you marvel, or does it make you humble, or does it make you weep to know that you cannot experience the pain you want to experience, the relationships you want to experience, the adventure and the love that you know must be out there somewhere but isn't anywhere close to you?
The harsh reality of our three dimensions is that no matter how far you travel, no matter how hard you try to put your mind in another person's head, you can't, and that's it. One must realize that even the closest of friends, the family, and lovers are all strangers with sealed minds. They might as well live in Chad.
But part of my life's mission is to make connections with the spirits of all humans, however distant, foreign, or dead they may be. No, I don't limit my curiosity to those who happen to be alive. I want to commune with the billions of dead and the billions of yet-to-be-alive. I want to soar across the land and across the eons to meet everyone and understand them all, intimately. I want to see through their eyes, literally, not figuratively.
The plants, the animals, the dirt and the rocks have something to offer me as well.
Enough of this kind of talk. I'm not a hippie. I gotta make a living. I have a bus to catch. Get out of my way.
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4 comments:
I believe in a term I just made up called the "homeostasis of sensory perception." I don't even know if that makes sense, but what I am trying to say is that the limit to which people perceive something is as profound as any others persons perceptions. Does that make any more sense? I don't think so. Let me try again. It doesn't matter that we can't see/feel/hear/touch/taste it all, becasue we are all limited by mortality. But during our mortality, we can appreciate the things we are able to perceive. And, the depth of our perceptions can be as deep as someone else's perceptions thought the thing perceived is vastly different.
Maybe an example will be helpful. Modernity. We live in a modern age. But everyone has always lived in a modern age. I recently got an iPod Shuffle. It is roughly the size of a postage stamp and holds 12 hours of music. It is amazing. That sense of amazement I feel thinking how incredible it is that modernity has such a device, I beleive is the same sense of amazement that historical people experienced with any advancement of technology, whether the wheel, the plow, the axe, or any other advancement.
The wonder our ancestors felt at being able to chop down a tree faser with an axe or pump water from a well is, I belive, the same as the wonder we experience when we marvel at how amazing it is that we have the ability to travel 75 miles an hour down the freeway, or lisen to and iPod, or surf the internet, or whatever else is modern to us.
And I belive the same applies to sensory perception. The smell of fresh baked bread has had the same impact on people since bread has been baked.
Life should not a quest to experience it all, for that is impossible. But I believe we should seek out good experiences and appreciate them. And our appreciation of our world is as valid as anyone else's appreciation of their world in any age into the past and future. Adventurous people always long to experience more, but within our adventurousness we can still appreciate the beauty of our own experiences.
This is one of my favorite quotes. It may not apply directly, but I love it. It's from Robert Heinlein:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
The Boid
That was a great comment! Thanks. Hey, I tried to go to your blog, but it's only available to invited people. Can I be invited?
There is nothing there. I started one but there is literally nothing there. Sorry.
The Boid
Oh, OK.
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