diddlee

One thing is clear to me, you can't know everything you'd like to know. You can't do everything you'd like to do. You can't read everything you'd like to read. You must hold onto some things and let go of others. Learning to make that choice is one of the big lessons of this life. Real Life Preacher Today was a big reminder of how delicate our lives are. Our friend Lisa Baird was killed in a freak accident. No matter how well we guard our lives, there are things which can take them that we can't anticipate. I am left deeply saddened. We can all take note of the precious things in our lives and appreciate the time we have with our friends and family.

I was reading on the NPR website and found a few essays that echoed my experience. One of them contained the "50% Theory". It has been observed that we easily cling to that which supports our own beliefs so I don't want to make that error here, but without straying too far into positivism I can see how one can remain optimistic with a creed like this one yet remain sufficiently pragmatic so one can meet adversity realistically. He wrote: I believe in the 50-percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. I believe life is a pendulum swing. It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future. Steve Porter Understanding what normal is! I can say that I still don't know what normal is. I can say that it is very different from what is was even a few years ago and radically different from what it was in my youth. That difference is in large part d...

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure than he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them. There will be no “hard fall” when things turn bad and he is confronted with adversity. He does not sink into depression, since his happiness rests on a solid foundation. I was looking over a book by a Frenchman who translates for the Dali Lama. And I suspect he knows no more about how to make me happy than my shoe. I think I can glean a little from the approach he suggests. It may be easy enough to make a list of all the things that disrupt my own happiness. Then make another that gives me happiness. Next I can divide these things into categories of action. Things I do, things done to me, where, when... and so on. Then ultimately look deeply at all of them to learn where control lies. I think they are right about cli...

"And the devil will drag you under With a soul so heavy you'd never float. Sit down...Sit down....Sit down you're rockin' the boat." It is tragic when your cherished beliefs are dashed. Don't think it can't happen to you. We all carry some pet delusion with us at all times. And I think if we really saw ourselves for what we are, we'd be too depressed to function. My studies have taken me to the realm of the Cosmos. It is daunting to come to realize how big it all is. I've been lost in the awe of a clear starry night since I was a boy. But that view of the night sky is made up of stars which are, at most, about 250 light years away. Even then, the stars that are visible are mostly very luminous large stars that are many times brighter and larger than our sun. When you take it to the limit, we find our observed universe is something on the order of 30 to 60 billion light years across. In all that there are 100 billion x 100 billion stars. We ARE tin...

Have you ever been told how the seasons mirror the stages of life? That Autumn is like middle to old age and Winter is like death? As I was riding yesterday, it occurred to me that this isn't really a very good comparison. We were riding down a tree-lined country road with the beautiful hues of Fall all around while leaves were showering down coloring the air and road with yellows, oranges, and reds. It didn't seem like the end of anything to me. It seemed more like a celebration. Imagine all of nature celebrating another successful year of living. A year in which those trees grew and produced fruit. They survived! So now they array themselves most colorfully and rain down the beautiful leaves like confetti. Its a celebration! Then following all this display, they rest and await the warmth of the Spring to burst forth in another cycle of growth. The bare limbs and trunks we see in Winter and associate with death isn't death at all.

To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. Carl Sagan I don't have to look very far to find something that reminds me how small we are in the scale of things. I think that dwelling on such things was one way I kept myself in a perpetual state of melancholy . That was my desire when I was a teen. I loved to marinate in misery. It let me keep some of my impulses to laughter or merriment in check. I smile even now about those days. My hero was "Mr. Spock". I strove to be a distant, controlled being like him. With it I was fooling myself about how well I was handling all the grief and pain that comes with growing up. Also, it affirmed my own feelings of worthlessness. I had a poor self image in many ways and deluded myself about my strengths. It is miserable being a kid. Now I don't see my insignificance as a problem. It is actually comforting. It tells me not to expect too much of myself...

It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life. Terry Pratchett Pratchett reminds me of Douglas Adams. They seem to have the same kind of humor. They take a familiar phrase and rework the obvious to make you see it again for the first time. It is so true about it being a flash. Our lifetimes rush by and are over so quickly. Perspective wise, as youths we feel immortal. By middle age, we sense the impending end. That awareness comes like the first cool morning of Autumn. As we enter our old age, either we become immersed in the fading twilight or approach the inevitable with a happy abandon. I want to be the latter. If I have the good luck to retain my stamina in those years, I see myself traveling, biking, hiking, and generally enjoying my physical self. If I keep my mind sharp, I will continue to learn and read all I can. What comes next? I expect it is something like the time before we became aware. The universe has unfolded...

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards. Fred Hoyle (1915 - 2001) Amazing to think that I am much closer to 'space' than I am to Florida! Sagan talked about how we "stand on the shores of the cosmic ocean" and look outward. It really hits home when you look at it like this. We live at the bottom of a gravity well thank goodness! That gravity, weak as it may be, is enough to keep that tenuous atmosphere over our heads. That atmosphere is our protection from cosmic rays and solar radiation. It shields from small meteors. Its constituents are what we breathe. I think we look upward toward the planets, the sun, and the myriad stars and envision the gulf of distance between them without understanding just how little separates us from its vacuum. Sobering thought that all the pollution we pump out has a relatively small volume to dissipate in. I've spent many a summer night lying in my driveway as a t...

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) If I were to attempt to explain Hemmingway's position I would conclude that 'knowledge' of the workings of the world reveals to us what a dangerous place we live in. Anything from the tiny virus to crashing meteors may loom ominously over our lives. Science tells of myriad ways we may face global extinction. The daily news brings story after story of inhumanity, war, or intolerance to our doorstep. We consume a steady diet of fear from our news sources. Our consumer based society spares no expense telling us how many ways we miss the mark from not having the right look or the right clothes or the latest car or the most frenetic vacation. Although this quotation originated in the 60's, it seems especially true nowadays. The media and advertisers have had 40 years to refine their techniques and know very well how to get at our insecurities and vices. I realize now that I spent a lo...

The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. Mark Twain What is humorous about sorrow? Every function in the human organism has its opposite. Imagine that each of us find many stimuli to be sorrow producing. It follows that other compensatory emotions may proceed from other stimuli. So in a sense the stimuli produce sorrow and in turn the sorrow becomes a stimuli that evokes humor which in turn is a stimulus. So it may simply be compensatory mechanisms no different from the synaptic releases that regulate blood pressure or respiration. The sophistication of the nuances of mind and thought create new thought from the constant arranging and rearranging of pieces of memory. This gives no solace and reduces the experience of joy/sorrow simply a dance of molecules between synapses. On a conscious level, our humor in the face of sorrow may simply be our recognition that we are in fact the cause of our suffering. Despite our best efforts we ha...

I discovered this web site in my musings... .... http://www.godisimaginary.com/ It raises an interesting difficulty of faith and belief. There isn't a single shred of verifiable evidence for the existence of God or any god! That is pretty much what I had determined a long time ago. There isn't a splinter of the cross, a fingernail or hair of Jesus', or a nail from the ark, or anything else which we can hang our belief on. The bible is written in such a way as to look like a hodge-podge of historical writings drawn up in ancient literary traditions that forego literal translation. Anything to do with the Christ must be taken completely on faith. Otherwise it wouldn't be a belief, it would be knowing. And knowing is what most modern educated people want. We are aware of being duped into countless things which waste our energy and interest. All logic and science would point to there being no reason to believe in God. He either doesn't participate in the world, doesn...

They tell us that the universe began with a rapid expansion about 14 billion years ago. That carbon didn't become widely available till about 8 billion years ago. Our own solar system formed about 4 billion years ago. It really came as a shock to many that the universe as we know it had a beginning. Now it appears that it will also have an end. Although the parts of it are flying apart faster and faster, the individual elements will get wider and wider apart until the last star burns out and all falls into darkness and cold. I don't know why I would worry about it. My life will end within another 50 or so orbits around the sun. Maybe a lot fewer. When I was reading some quotes from Carl Sagan, I ran across a photo he had made from Voyager looking back at a tiny speck in a dark sky. It was earth from 14 billion miles away. He commented on how every idea, person, dream, anything experienced by humankind had occurred on that tiny speck of dust. It was humbling. In the midst of all...