More on Lap 67

 

I have been giving a lot of thought to what I do with my time. 

It stands to reason, does it not, that if there are things we spend too much time on, then there are things that we should spend more time on?  After all, if we spend less time on activity “A”, and the amount of time we have remains the same, then we have more time to use on activity “B”.  

So, what do I think we should spend more of our time on? 

First, and perhaps most important, we should spend more time thinking.  Let’s face it, we spend a lot more time feeling than we do thinking.  Sadly, a lot of that time is spent being angry. There is nothing wrong with being angry at all, it is only the action that inevitably springs from anger that can make it wrong.  Ask yourself, did I ever make a good decision in anger?  Have I ever regretted something said or done in anger? Be honest…

What do I mean when I say “think?”  Exactly how does one “think”?  I’d say that we might start by being a little more—no, a LOT more—skeptical about what we hear.  What is the source, is there an easy to see agenda behind it?  Are there alternative explanations for what we hear reported? 

This is particularly appropriate if what we are hearing is labeled as “science.”  I recently finished reading a book by the late Carl Sagan, entitled “The Demon Haunted World”.   In it, Dr. Sagan concludes that unreason, and non-skeptical acceptance of “science” is a dangerous thing to do, and one that threatens our most basic freedoms.  A scientist, he wrote, should keep asking why a thing is so, disproving any alternative explanations.  This is not a new idea, it can be traced back to Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, among others, and was part and parcel to the enlightenment philosophies of 18^th Century Europe (Which led to the American Revolution, but that’s a topic for another day). 

So, think.  Consider alternatives.  If, after you have done so, you still come to the same conclusion, then you can be confident in it, much more confident than if you just accepted it, or worse, silenced those with alternative views.  It is a good use of your time!

 

We don’t think at all about who we are, what our life means.  Not our “identity”, whatever that is, but who we are.  If we did, it just might lead to a lot less strife.  To answer that question, a little bit of scientific skepticism is in order.  We should keep asking why a thing we believe is so. And should pay attention to the alternative explanations.

Recently, I used one of those genetic ancestry kits.  The results were generally what I expected to find in my genetic heritage, but there were a couple surprises, for which there were logical explanations. 

For instance, I was surprised by the Scandinavian part of my genetic makeup. But asking why revealed that the Vikings (among others) spread out over Northern Europe, including Germany and the British Isles, and made it inevitable that Scandinavia would be a part of my DNA.  That appears to have been from my Dad’s DNA.

What was most surprising was the roughly 2% Sub Saharan African in my DNA.  That was, it is thought, the result of a migration from Africa to southern Europe—Italy, France, Portugal, etc.—early on in man’s history. My maternal DNA was all from Southern Europe. 

The science behind that evaluation might not be 100% accurate, but to me, it points to a much larger picture, that we humans have a common origin.  

In short, anyone who claims to be a “pure” anything is likely to be mistaken.  

And, if we spend time thinking about it, our differences start to diminish.  Which leads me to another thing we don’t do enough of.  I will probably lose a number of readers by saying this, but I ask that they hear me out, in the spirit of thinking, rather than feeling. 

I don’t think we spend enough time on our knees in prayer, either figuratively or literally.   I read a brilliant column in the Village Voice a few years ago which talks about prayer.  Andrew WK is a hard partying rock and roll artist, but also a surprisingly profound thinker, in my opinion. If I did not read what he had to say, I would never have known, as I would have simply rejected the thoughts of a self-confessed ‘party animal” out of hand. 

A reader wrote a letter asking Andrew’s advice about prayer, as he was experiencing a family illness, and found himself unable to honor his family’s request that he pray.  Here is a link to the entire article:   https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/09/03/ask-andrew-w-k-prayer-is-stupid-right/

The advice, briefly, was that one did not have to believe in God to pray, and that often we do it without realizing it.  The writer says,

“Getting down on your knees” is not about lowering your power or being a weakling, it’s about showing respect for the size and grandeur of what we call existence — it’s about being humble in the presence of the vastness of life, space, and sensation, and acknowledging our extremely limited understanding of what it all really means.

Being humble is very hard for many people because it makes them feel unimportant and helpless. To embrace our own smallness is not to say we’re dumb or that we don’t matter, but to realize how amazing it is that we exist at all in the midst of so much more. To be fully alive, we must realize how much else there is besides ourselves. We must accept how much we don’t know — and how much we still have to learn — about ourselves and the whole world. Kneeling down and fully comprehending the incomprehensible is the physical act of displaying our respect for everything that isn’t “us.””

For me, the common origin of humanity that I mentioned earlier is God, that we are all His children.  You do not have to be a believer, or even be spiritual in any way, to contemplate this.   The genetic science indicates common origins, as do archeology and history. 

If we start from the premise that we all have common origins, will our differences seem so large?

And maybe time spent in prayer is well used. 

Think about it. 

Thank you so much for reading!