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| "God Rays" photo by Finola, all rights reserved |
It strikes me that a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to figure out who’s right and making sure people know it. Probably just one of those quirks of human nature that either is great at keeping us from paying attention to the glaring probability that the whole human race is pretty much not right, thus allowing mother nature to get on with the tiresome job of getting rid of us while our attention is diverted, or, is it nothing so exciting, just our mundane animal instincts; can’t give up on fighting for territory even if it’s just all in our heads.
Or maybe it’s got to do with our need to figure out what more there is to us than a few fleeting years here on planet earth and our uncomfortableness with admitting that we don’t actually know. There comes religion and the biggest right ‘n’ wrong tug of war there is.
I’m currently reading “The Secret”, living in very close proximity to a Jehovah’s Witness elder, belong to a family of Catholics, and I digest the world’s news daily and today was a slew of religious stories; so that combined with recent hullabaloo about how the mad scientists under the Alps are going to blow us all back to the Big Bang with their particle accelerator, well it’s no wonder I’m thinking about our obsession with being right about those pesky questions – Where did we come from? Why are we here? And by the way, who did this? And what on earth or elsewhere will happen after?
No answers to any of those here folks, sorry. But anyway, it’s not just about being right about religious beliefs – we humans have an insatiable need for righteousness. But for me, I’ve grown more and more towards the belief that when it comes down to it, it often seems that it’s so much more practical to accept that no such absolute exists. Not that I can in any way claim I always achieve such magnanimity myself. But really, let’s not even go into quantum physics where the possibilities become a bigger infinite than I can comprehend, but how can we possibly know the right and wrong of the most of it? There are just so many permutations and combinations within our own households let alone our countries and our world – it just strikes me as a little over important of us to really believe we “alone” have the right way.
I like to take a breath sometimes and put being right aside and see what becomes a possibility that I thought wasn’t there before. Yes, it’s important to be right on occasion – about the answers to the questions on an exam, following the map accurately back from the wilderness adventure, how much baking soda to put in the cake, labelling jars of dangerous liquids, what money you really have in your bank and such, but when it comes to judging a fellow human’s right to their views, their ways, their lives, I feel much more comfortable knowing it’s okay that I can’t possibly always be right. That opens so many more doors to me for discovery, understanding, enjoyment, peace and happiness and leaves me with a lot of energy to put into creating and enjoying the quirks and unexpected gifts of life as we don’t know it.
But just imagine if those burrowing scientists did bring about the end of the world – who would be right then? Or maybe we’re already in a parallel universe and we haven’t yet noticed.
Ok, so what do you think? How do you view yours or other people's need to know?
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| Hunter's Moon at Dawn, photo by Finola, all rights reserved |
