"There but for the Grace of God, Go I"

Just a quick FYI, that I found utterly fascinating.

You know how, in Vampire mythology, exposure to direct sunlight kills them. It bakes them completely. I had watched "Legend" a year or so ago (the Will Smith remake of 'The Omega Man', which was not terribly good, but at least interesting) and in it, Mr. Smith, as one of the last "normal" people alive was capturing and studying these new "vampires", who of course, had this condition. He would experiment on them, then expose them to UV light to see what happened. He had a wall of about 50 who he'd accidentally killed because his experiments failed, and they roasted under the "light of the sun".

I always took this part of Vampire mythology to be acceptable as a standard "suspension-of-disbelief" to enjoy the stories.

Turns out...it is entirely real. A massively small amount of the population, in fact, is born with some kind of defect that does NOT protect the skin/blood/system from the radiation of the sun, and this small population...a very real group of people living today...would experience 3rd degree burns (i.e., all the way to the bone) if exposed to direct sunlight. These people cannot go outside, at all, until after dusk, or they would die.

And so, the "There but for the grace of God go I" is this: I am composed of all the same atoms and molecules that these people are. I, and the rest of us, not only resemble them, we but differ in a minuscule sub-micropscopic fragment of DNA. And I walk freely under the sun, and the worst I get (and yes, I am fair skinned, and did one single time, get a 1st degree burn [skin only] from hours and hours under that gigantic fusion-reaction-lamp that is called "Sol") is a "sun-burn".

"But for the grace of God" (or whatever you deem that to mean; natural selection, Tao, The One, The Many...don't care...WHATEVER "it" IS) you and I, who are not among them, walk in the face of BRUTAL radiation which can and should roast us to our bones, and we are unaffected. We just 'are'. And the fireflame of waves upon waves of body-roasting radiation...ehhh....they bother us not.

I find that fascinating.

And yes, I know, it does open up probably some other gigantic can-o-worms of all the OTHER things that should kill us all immediately and without comment, and don't. And perhaps, one by one I will look at them, to try to understand; why? It is the goodest and bestest of "why". But I would love to know...why.

I guess...wouldn't we all?

The World Financial Crisis: This too shall pass.

"May you live in Interesting Times". That is an ancient Chinese curse, and, perhaps it is, and we most certainly do.

There is no doubt but that the world financial crisis is right now a "Once in a Century" event. Something like this happened just once between 1900 and 2000. Let us hope this one happens also, just once, during 2000-2100.

But if I could turn this around for all of us for a moment: If you are currently employed and have a home which is not in foreclosure and you can feed yourself and your family, whomever among you that description fits, please count yourselves as utterly blessed on this day, and over this Holiday. If you are among those whose livelihoods and lives have been harmed or challenged by these current circumstances, please take heart and remember that all things in time pass, and this too shall pass and become better. You need to hang on and remember that.

And to every one of you, and every one in a similar position, I am hoping for you and praying for you. I know you all are always used to me acting as a cheerleader and an indefatigable optimist always arguing for the logical best result. I want you to understand: I still am. I still have the same hope and I mean for everything. This economy WILL improve. The cascading failures will soon reach their retaining walls of market-correction and government-imposed resurrection, and after a few months of crashing against those retaining walls, the other optimists out there like me will start cautiously buying again, cautiously lending again, cautiously simply PARTICIPATING again because of one simple fact. All of us hate this climate of doom. None of us want it. And everyone wants it to be hopeful again. Human beings exist on hope. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast". It isn't just a fact that is embedded into us, it is genetic and spiritual cause that we all share. And right now, if the overall human gestalt can simply be given enough room, enough reason, to think that things will get better...things will get better. We will all start to cause it to become better.

We will affect everything with our thoughts of hope and our dreams of better times, every single piece of hope fluttering, Chinese-butterfly-like, on the entire quantum universe, and AS WE WILL IT, AS WE WISH IT, it WILL GET BETTER. And soon. We all want it so much, that want will transform the world into our wish. But for now, we must wait for the retaining walls to convince our gestalt that the downward spiral has been contained.

I think that our gestalt will be convinced sooner rather than later....

Musings on the Universe, God and Duality.

As for God and why He lets people suffer, the basic observable thing about the Universe is that God invented the idea of Duality. It is absurdly present everywhere. It is so present that we take it for granted that there simply isn't a way to make a universe that didn't have Duality...but we cannot know, because we cannot properly imagine a universe of true Triality or Quadrality (or more), although we can and do imagine that perfection for some reason is Monality. God must have noticed that in order to make Light pretty impressive, He had to make dark. To make Warmth a good feeling, he had to make cold. To have Good be of value, and to be sought after, there had to be something to compare it against, evil. To make Joy the utter triumph that it is, there had to be pain. And to make Life a treasure that should never be taken for granted, there must be death. Some philosophers, various writers, and a Twilight Zone or two have taken on the notion of immortality...that when granted utter freedom from death, apples eventually taste like dust, sex has no pleasure, drink is no longer intoxicating though you may get drunk, and the simple joy of love of your friends, your spouse, your children...all of it has no meaning anymore. Whatever else is, God is the inventor of Duality...and since we live in His universe, I think we should give Him the benefit of the doubt that He's a great deal smarter than we are, and that the idea must be there for a reason. For every piece of matter, a piece of antimatter. And perhaps, though I am by no means certain, for every tear cried somewhere here, there is laughter and joy for those moments elsewhere. And vice versa. I do not know or even think that they "echo" in reverse, I think simply that they auto-balance. And I do not know or think that they do it identically in space-time. The universe does not operate in instants, it operates in eternity. It, including space and time, are not the linear things we see, but they are in fact One Thing. Duality is simply part of the Oneness that just IS. So, on balance, over nanoseconds, or eons, all things balance...dark and light, sorrow and joy, death and life. So that each thing we value is something we KNOW to value.

A door that opens before us

Life is about opportunities. It's about doors that open...and they stay open usually for just a short time. Then they close. Almost all of our lives are actually goverened by these choices that we make...to take the opportunity, and try...or to stand and watch the door as it shuts before us. Some doors we should walk through. Some we shouldn't. Some, we will walk through, and the result will not be of benefit. Others may change our lives for the better so entirely that we cannot even imagine who we were before went through. But the only place that we can go where we will find ourselves in a different place from where we are now...is through a door that opens before us.

The Palm-Lined Hege Maze

I have always lived by this primary set of words...words that truly reflect my soul:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh,
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference."

That is Robert Frost, explaining my life as he explained his own.

I didn't really choose that part of me...it was simply me, at my core. I did not choose the 'path less travelled by' just because it WAS different from everyone else and that I did not want to 'follow the herd'. I chose the path because the path everyone else was following...it just wasn't what was in me, in my deepest part. In my core. In my soul.

So, due to that inherent part of my inner super-structure, I certainly have been led on a wonderful, wild ride in this life, and I have loved MOST all of it's moments, good and bad. Yes, to be sure, as this blog reflects, I suppose this last "turn down the path untrodden" did lead to a more "boggy" ride than the rest.

You see, 3 years ago, after my health stuff and my getting-laid-off-in-corporate-America-because-of-my-health-stuff, I did explore an entirely new path, as yet untrodden by 99.9999999% of people on this planet. I said, "I love Hawaii, I love Maui, why not live there and make that my home and succeed from there!". FABULOUS CONCEPT.

In function, however, it was much like wandering into a MOST spectacular English Hedge-Maze, where the maze was lined with palm trees and perfect-blue 73-degree ocean water....but there was no exit other than from the entry point I came in on.

Imagine that. Perfect English Garden. Hedge-Maze in the middle, and this one was the most beautiful maze you ever saw, with palm-trees and ocean-views. But there was no way out.

So I spent 3 years there, appreciating the miracle of the beauty for the first 2 years, and sadly, not appreciating it for the last 1. But I now found my way back to the beginning. To the exit, which was the entrance before.

Now I move past the maze, and into...what?

The future. The joy of another day. Of opening possibilities.

I can only pray, each and every day, that I remember and treasure the words of Jonathan Swift, who said, so aptly, "May you Live all the days of your life."

There is no here there. :)

Today, there are fewer Steel-Cheeseheads in my mind. Which is good, because those things take up a lot of room, and they are quite pointy. And they make an annoying jangly sound when you walk...

Let's see...where are we now? I use the royal "we" because there are many different shades and iterations of myself right now, kindof like what happens when you and 4 other roommates share the same bathroom. It can be terribly inconvenient when you need to use it and it's already occupied. So, the roommates currently sharing my brain-loo are an odd lot. We've met the Cheeshead fellow. I'll introduce others as they arise.

But today, I am more "me" than "other-than-the-me-that-I'd-like-to-be", ergo, I am gooderer and happier. I did, after all, just get a call for an interview in the industry I've always wanted to be in (the Video Game industry), the sun is out, and life stretches before me as infinite possibility.

And, amongst other things, I had a couple of friends point out the obvious, which is what I also pointed out in my very first Opening Salvo. "Where-ever you go, there you are," but different variations thereto that sank in better.

One version, which I did enjoy much, was "Success is how you experience each step and not the step itself," which, while uncredited, I believe is from an Internet marketing success program. It evidences clearly though that it's how we react to everything that makes all the difference.

The other version, was wisdom from the finest of all the self help gurus: Ziggy. Yes, the potatoe-shaped lump of a cartoon character.

Buckaroo Banzai-like, Ziggy taught us simply

"You should enjoy here while you’re here, because there is no here there."

Ain't it the truth.

The Steel Cheese-Head...The Butcher's Knives for Hands, of course.

And yet, here I am -- in my 40's, so overwhelmed by life that I find the smallest things hard to do -- and yet I yearn for the old days when I would simply have been shoved into an asylum and pumped full of Thorazine...where the evil doctors would perform experiments on me while I was conscious or the whole place would burn down around me, melting gobs of asbestos on my paralyzed skin. Then, later, of course, my spirit would be re-awaken and roam the halls as an apparition with a steel cheese-head shaped face with ultra-huge butcher's knives for hands. And I could then exact my revenge upon unrelated travelers who stumbled upon my haunted psych ward, flaying them alive, really for no other purpose than the fact that I, for some reason, had been spiritually re-invented with a steel cheese-head for a face and two ultra-huge butcher's knives for hands...well, where-ever we go, we also must use what we are given.