Are you a wave, or a particle?
… Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
This fundamental question, "what are you" is one where there can be many versions of true, all contradictory, all spot on.
I recently had read a ‘blurb’ written for a newsletter at one of my jobs. I got interviewed, the editor went off, and out came one true picture of who I am:
[…] and a masters of science in statistics. His current work involves modeling mortality ratios […] He is also employed at XXXX where he has been a sampling statistician for over a decade. As an active divorced dad raising two blooming adolescents keeps XXX pretty busy. In whatever time is left, XXX reads an eclectic mix of science text and junk novels, cooks, stays involved in the XXXXX community farm, and imagines he is a writer. He is also active in community service, working with persons in recovery on a volunteer basis. Traveling when he can, recent trips have included Costa Rica, San Francisco and the Grand Canyon. He currently lives as caretaker, at the XXXX XXXX park in XXXX.
I looked this over and I though ‘This is a guy I might want to meet. This sounds like a guy who has a good life, I thought when I read it. Careear trajectory on track, traveling, kids, interesting … together. I might even be jealous of him. And, every word is true.
Now twist your head slightly, and squint a bit … blink a little to clear the smoke stinging your eyes, and you see …
… the raw version.
Having barely survived two emotionally and financially devastating divorces, XXXX is hunkered down at the XXXX XXXX park, working two jobs, licking his wounds and trying to simplify. Despite never having enough time with them due to a well financed high powered divorce lawyer funded by his Ex’s rich friend, his kids still seem to respect him and they manage to have some fun together. An advanced degree, completed in a blur while working full time and raising small children, embarked on for reasons still unclear, enables him to pull down the big bucks required to feed the gaping maw of bad debt leftover from trashed marriages as he sits chained to a desk, fantasizing obsessively about a never-realized carrear as a travel writer. Too scarred to deal with other human beings in general and "romantic" relationships in particular, XXXXX walks the land alone and reads anything he finds lying around when life does not require him to show up. Somehow he has manged to stay sober for a number of years, and shows up at AA meetings simply to demonstrate that continuous long term sobriety is possible despite horrible lapses in judgment and self-inflicted disasters.
Oh yea, I know this guy too. Humm. Do I have a good life, or a disaster on my hands? Is it a wave or a particle?
Hmmmm, wave or particle? Perhaps like light, it is neither…. or both. Aren’t waves and particles just constructs of our human imagination. Concepts that we have created to describe what IS. Light sometimes acts like a wave, sometimes like a particle. But the way we analyze its behavior doesn’t change its essence. Strangely enough, even though we can manipulte light, and even produce it, we fail to understand it completely. Seems to me that to sit on either side of the “good life- disaster dichotomy is like trying to stuff 10 lbs in a 5 lb bag. Just wont fit. I’ve heard it said that a person need look no further than inside themselves to find the battle between the forces of good and evil. Maybe our lives play out basically the same way, just macrocosmic expressions of what is inside is. Which may be just a microcosmic expression of the entirety of all things.
Reminds me of a Taoist anectdote I once read. Seems a certain Buddhist temlple was hit by a bolt of lightening. Hundreads of years old, and having survived numerous calamities, the temple was split in two. Worshipers and town’s people alike we aghast. Some said that the gods were angry and reigning down their wrath. Others said that it was a sign, forshadowing more disaster. Still others felt that God was punishing Buddhists for straying from the proper spiritual path.
According to the Taoist author who recounted the tale, no matter what meaning people assigned to the event, there was only one thing that they knew for sure. Lightening struck the temple!
Carl - glad you took some time to write here … I have been telling people at work quite a bit these days “You have reality on one hand, and Expectations on the other hand, and … guess which is gonna rule?”
Your comment didn’t show up right away because I have moderation on … You will aways be approved, though (grin)