“The tragedy of man is that he has developed
an intelligence eager to uncover mysteries,
but not strong enough to penetrate them.”
Hans Zinsser – Rats, Lice and History
Quickly…first impressions only:
1.
What is the smallest thing you can imagine?
2.
What is the largest thing you can conceive?
3.
Who is the oldest person on you know?
4.
What does your best friend look like?
5.
Where were the stove and refrigerator in the
kitchen of your home when you a teenager?
How long did it take you to ‘see’ the answer to each of
these questions? It doesn’t matter how
old you are, I suspect the images came pretty rapidly to your mind…possibly as
you finished reading the question.
A lot of things could be said about this, but the point here
is the astonishing capacity our brains have to bring ideas…reflections
really…of things ‘imagined’giving them as much credibility as though they were actually
right in front of us. Maybe the smallest
thing you imagined was a grain of sand, an atom or a quark – which by the way
is ONLY imaginable. As an aside, a quark
is so tiny that compared to an atom it would be a magnitude difference of the
earth (atom) compared to a clenched fist (quark)!
Maybe the largest thing was the Earth, Sun, Milky Way or
Universe – which like the quark, can also ONLY be imagined! You might
have taken a moment regarding the appearance of your best friend, but were probably
a bit surprised how almost instantly you were able to see the kitchen in your
mind’s eye.
This little exercise happened so quickly and naturally, that
you didn’t even think about what an astonishingly complex thing you just
performed. Considering you used 3-pound ‘computer’
residing inside a 7 to 8 pound box – including skin, eyes, muscles, teeth, tongue
and ears – it is mind blowing!
The building blocks for this intricate system began when we
were babies with ideas or impressions entering our sensory system – touch,
taste, smell, sight, sound – from the outside, like sand in an hourglass, slipping in one
‘grain’ or notion at a time.
Initially, these ideas seemed isolated and disconnected, but
like seeds planted in the ground, a lot was going on ‘under the surface’ – an
unconscious germination, weaving together small patchworks of concepts that
quietly interacted…taking on life…growing together in an ever increasing body
of information.
In the early cultivation process, it was not so clear what
any of this ‘incidental’ educational programming meant, but as we began to mature,
we learned to control the direction of that informational body’s growth finding
ourselves attracted to different ideas, that became the world in which we now live…a
world where we can imagine the smallest of elements and the largest of
constructs by simply redirecting our thoughts.
When you take a moment to consider that from a fertilized
egg combining our parent’s genetic code, the bodies that we inhabit were
created. Our minds matured into a few
billion neurons (an estimate) interconnected in the liquid chemistry of our
brains, generating electrical current, in enough of a coordinated way, to
capture and retain ideas, sounds, tastes, touches and smells – accessed pretty
much at will. How does one find any
vocabulary to describe the magnitude of this creation??!! Amazing would be an understatement of the
greatest degree.
A little perspective…
As astonishing as our
bodies and minds are, look at this picture taken in 1990 from the Voyager 1
space probe as it was leaving our solar system.
It is a picture of the earth from a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6
billion km). The image is called ‘The
Pale Blue Dot’, and as you will note, without the arrow and inset, it would be
almost impossible to see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot).
The late Carl Sagan said,
“Look…at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love,
everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human
being
who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and
suffering,
thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic
doctrines, every
hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and
destroyer of
civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love,
every
mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every
teacher of
morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every
"supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our
species
lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
Today, as you go about your daily life, note the things
around you – your car and roads upon which you drive…the buildings in your
town…the airplanes that fly overhead…the computer you are using…your phone…your
house or apartment.
All of it…every single bit of it began as a thought in someone’s mind, which found a way to gather the resources from the earth (directly or indirectly) to then create it…not doubt impressive.
All of it…every single bit of it began as a thought in someone’s mind, which found a way to gather the resources from the earth (directly or indirectly) to then create it…not doubt impressive.
And yet…as incredible and intricately interacting our system
of life is…we and the minds we have been given are little more than a tiny spot
of moisture, on a infinitesimally small life supporting dot in a universe
inconceivably complex.
When I think about this, my brain hurts and I find no
words. Maybe the Psalmest sums it up the
best for me:
“When I consider thy
heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the
stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that
thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man,
that thou visitest him?”
- Psalm 8:3,4
How does one then find their place? Maybe the words of Sri Nisargadatta provide a workable sense of meaning:
“Wisdom says I am
nothing
Love says I am
everything.
Between these two, my
life flows.”
- ted
