The Essence of Life

I just happened across the essence of life. I wasn’t really looking for it but it found me. I was on the first leg of my usual round trip shuttle junket to work, minding my own business, reading a tiny book entitled, “Lying”, by an avowed atheist, Sam Harris. Harris seems to be on a quest to show that humanity can hold a sense of ethics and values and morals without the guidance of a religiously set gyroscope. I’ve always felt that way. In fact, it always seemed to me that religion gave people a free pass to misbehave in the most violent and despicable ways. In reading this book, dealing with truth telling, honesty and integrity, the triumvirate of goodness, my headspace was available to pull out from the tangle of intellectual musings, an epiphany. I love epiphanies because they are so spontaneous and travel in and out of one’s brain like some runaway train. But this train wasn’t just filled with the freight of my usual noodlings with no real destination. This one had application and was headed somewhere in my brain. Before exiting it left me with this: To live a fulfilling and worthwhile life there are two elements necessary and they work together as partners; we must learn all we can and with that knowledge we must make the world a better and more beautiful place. That’s it. Simple really. What constitutes learning is everything we bump into as we stray through life: school, friends, relatives, marriage, child bearing, guitar playing, book reading, sailing, science, Darwin, Beethoven, spelunking, beekeeping, job, career, beer drinking, homelessness, butterflies… It’s all out there and we breathe it all in and learn about ourselves, those around us, what constitutes love, how to share, how to care about things outside of ourselves, how to observe, how to think and problem solve, how to be impeccable and question authority and get along and be a good citizen and discover. What we do with all of this knowledge makes all the difference. The point of this exercise of learning as we are being is to gift it to the world. It doesn’t belong to us, not to covet nor hoard. Our unique intellects, shaped by our unique learning experiences need to be released into the world to make it a more beautiful and lasting place. It’s that simple. To do less is to simply take up breathing space.

Paradise by M.C. Escher