Musings of a Middle Aged Man

Sometimes, when the weather is too miserable to be outside and my daily meditation writing has been converted to bits and bytes, I scroll through YouTube videos picking up bits and tids of interesting information. Most videos are relatively short, making it extremely easy to fall into a video vortex, losing hours that can never be recovered for future investment. One of the YouTube rabbit holes I lose myself in, centers on the increasingly common debates between theists with atheists. I find the debates between the intellectually brilliant minds of atheist Christopher Hitchens and his ilk with the equally brilliant minds of theists who are hobbled by dogmas requiring a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to shoehorn into their otherwise cogent arguments.

The Bible is rather cryptic when it comes to identifying the antichrist. End time prophecies predict there will be a single AntiChrist appearing after the rapture, the bodily ascension of believers who were spirited away to spend an eternity with the Christ. The same verse, 1 John 2:18, also claims there are many antichrists amongst the target audience long before the rapture event. I guess there could be legions of small a antichrists with an ultimate capital A Antichrist appearing coincidental with the end times. Otherwise, the Bible is contradicting itself, a problem believers must find a way to rationalize away, as I did with the composite sketch. If not, the claimed infallibility of the BIble would be undermined, a shift in plate tectonics rightfully collapsing the faith upon itself.

Growing up in my era, it was not uncommon to hear the phrase, "Just who do you think you are?" This was not a query begging a metaphysical answer from our psyches. It was an admonishment to stay in our lane, to not get involved in certain things, not because we did not hold crucial information, but rather because our status was beneath the lofty realm in which we inserted ourselves. The question was obviously rhetorical, not one genuinely seeking an answer. It was a socially acceptable method to shame another into submission. Empathy was not a mainstream emotion back in the day, still isn't in some degenerate swaths of the population who view caring for another to be indicative of liberal wokeism. Putting that silliness aside, how would, should, could I answer...assuming, that is, the query was sincere?

There is an inordinate amount of inane chatter in the US claiming that the people of the country, the entire world, need healing from their fallen ways. By that, they mean that God needs to be inserted into everyday life via laws based on biblical standards so people can live moral and prosperous lives. It includes posting the 10 Commandments in school classrooms to indoctrinate the students into Christianity. They act as if words posted on a wall can make up for the bad example routinely set by Christian adults and Christian parents, most who claim allegiance to the Bible but have scant biblical knowledge outside talking head rhetoric.

It is natural for children to be afraid of the dark. The physical darkness, absent ambient light, forces them to navigate by tentative touches to get an incomplete feeling for the immediate surroundings they cannot see. Is the elephant a wall, a snake, a spear, a tree, a fan, a rope? The visual can say none of the above. The blind hold steadfast to their misaligned interpretations. It is, after all, what the hands saw and categorized for storage in their imperfect memory banks for later retrieval. It becomes their 'truth' despite being very wrong.

Our nearest evolutionary ancestors, the Neanderthals, existed for 400,000 years, during which time they successfully inhabited less than 10% of Earth's landmass. They lived primarily in Europe, Western and Central Asia, extending into southern Siberia. Their highest densities were in France, Spain, and Italy. Homo Sapiens, our species, has existed for 300,000 years. In that time, we have managed to inhabit 90-95% of Earth's land surface. The only areas safe from us are Antarctica and other harsh, high-elevation regions. Antarctica is kept pristine with the help of international treaties. The highest elevations are by practicality. It is hard to survive in brutal cold, especially when ensuring access to food and water.

I have recently stumbled upon a BBC television series highlighting the scientific facts along with the cultural and emotional threads tying modern humans with the evolutionary past and the six other human species, born by Earth mother, that have existed over the past 300,000 years. Ritualistic behaviors were moderate in our closest ancestors, the Neanderthals with whom we interbred, as identified via intentional burials and body ornamentation with decorative pigments and feathers from specific bird species. Home Sapiens, modern humanity's only surviving species, engaged and engages in rituals extensively, so much so that it has become fundamental to who we are and dominates significant aspects of our lives, both in personal and communal routines.

The security in which an artist should never seek refuge is either personal or financial, which drives them to avoid provocative or innovative works, fearing backlash, censorship, or persecution with the corresponding loss of income. This can weaken the arts' impact on society because the art is safe. Safe art is not doing the job of art. Worse than that...

There are several adventures that have been on my bucket list for what seems like forever, but it is closer to forty years. Two were planted in my psyche by author Colin Fletcher when he wrote books about his 1958 walk from the bottom to the top of California and his book about hiking the length of the Grand Canyon in 1963. Those books placed both the Pacific Coast Trail and a rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon as life goals. Other treks I want to experience are the 800-mile Hayduke Trail through the Colorado Plateau and the granddaddy hike in the US, the 2,190-mile Appalachian Trail. Other adventure dreams are cycling the US coast to coast, summiting Mount Everest, though pictures of the crowded peak make it less and less appealing, and the four-day Inca Trail hike at elevation ending with entry to Machu Picchu.

Growing up, I remember being indoctrinated into the colloquialism that 'practice makes perfect' as a way to encourage the repeated rehearsal of actions or behaviours to perfect our ability to execute them as flawlessly as possible, with the ultimate goal of perfect execution. The fundamental flaw in the expression is that practicing anything imperfectly achieves excellence in imperfection, meaning the trend is towards becoming perfectly imperfect.

For a significant portion of my life, beginning from when I was eleven years old, my parental units owned a cottage in central Wisconsin lake country. Not blessed with generational wealth, we spent the majority of our vacations from the early days of tent camping, through a camper, eventually replaced by a prefab cottage, lovingly termed the summer estate, making visits easier and more frequent. Even with the cottage, I tended to erect a tent in the yard to avoid the noise of the crowded house. I knew when we were getting close, even with my eyes closed, due to the smell of water, intermixed...

I have posted over 4,500 blogs on the interweb and have written two unpublished books with a third underway, and have numerous other writings either collecting dust in journals scattered throughout my home or long lost in the scrap heaps of time. Estimating an hour per blog entry, the investment is more than 180 consecutive days of writing 24 hours a day, nonstop. Realistically, the two books written required several hundred hours each, equating to 60ish 24-hour days. Then there are the countless unposted musings. In all likelihood, I've spent an entire year of 24-hour days writing and editing. I am probably about 1,200 hours shy of the 10,000 necessary to master a discipline, any discipline. However, that is a byproduct, not the goal of my writing investment.

It is not uncommon to view birth and death as extreme opposites on a linear life continuum. But are they? This is a concept fitting the thought patterns of a Western mind indoctrinated in linear time thinking, not so much for a person inculcated into the Eastern mind viewing time as circular. Birth and Death could be envisioned as the same swinging door...

t is a long-standing and well-established fact that the majority of humans will experience Presbyopia beginning sometime in their 40s to 60s that will see them requiring reading glasses or some other form of near vision correction to see clearly in close quarters. By the early to mid-60s, the degeneration plateaus negating the need for stronger and stronger corrective lenses. My near vision does seem to have stabilized at a +2.75 correction. Strangely...

My first reaction upon walking through the Chaco Canyon ruins was to be struck by awe, awe and wonder, then marvel at the masonry still partially standing more than one thousand years after the bricks were carefully laid to exacting standards using earthen mortar between the carefully shaped sandstone blocks by ancient hands. Those craftsmen are long lost to the mysteries hidden by long time. The ruins were long ago relieved of artifacts by grave robbers, both amateur (petty thieves) and professional (archaeologists), leaving the crumbling buildings.

I have oft wondered at my visceral attraction to deserts despite growing up on the Midwest plains, frequently experiencing more rainfall than can be absorbed by the increasingly cement-burdened environs. I am not referring to the sand dunes comprising 20% of desert surfaces, although they do have their undulating charm despite hosting virtually no vegetation. I am referring to the other 80%, also barely hospitable, consisting of gravel plains, rocky plateaus, etc, in which dispersed vegetation armed with daggers, hooks, and barbs grasp tenuously to life. Along with a host of venomous animals, eking out a living. Even the rocks on the ground are known to bite and slice open the soles of feet or any exposed flesh by any unfortunate tripping and falling.

t is a well-established fact that the human animal seeks out patterns with which to evaluate our environment. In our prehominid days, pattern recognition was crucial to surviving life on the savannah, helping our ancestors avoid predators and recognize where reliable sources of water and food could be found. As we evolved, pattern discernment enabled them to interpret social cues, including facial expressions and gestures, crucial to group cooperation and knowledge sharing. In the modern era, patterns are used to solve problems efficiently by applying solutions from past situations to current problems. It helps us make informed decisions instead of reacting randomly to stimuli. At the neural level, the skill compares new input with stored memories, enabling the rapid processing of complex information.

I feel compelled to practice my art daily, be it planting seed quotes at the top of a blank page that will grow into handwritten essays with the pruning relegated to those later hours when my peak creativity has subsided from those morning devotions, or I am carefully laying acrylic paint on canvas when it is too cold to create outside, or composing the images that will be captured in my camera, or editing the photos to more accurately reflect my vision for their aesthetic beauty. I invest more time working on my art than any other activity, with reading a not too distant second.

Unlike in the US, where we hide our elderly in semi-permeable prisons with others of their kind visiting them as time in busy schedules permits, indigenous peoples who tended to venerate the aged kept their mature family members living with them. They were fully aware their ancient ones had earned a lifetime of wisdom from which they offered apples of knowledge for the asking, a tradeoff far outweighing any burden of caring for them as they lost motor and mind functions before succumbing...

I am sure it is a nearly universal trait that humans imagine themselves as gods wishing they could magically right a perceived wrong so the world could be, if not a kinder, gentler space, then, at least, one where fairness is the ultimate outcome of all inter-species and intra-species interactions weighted slightly toward the benefit of the human playing god. Most of us outgrow this childish fantasy of being the ultimate arbiter for the planet. Some never outgrow childish ways...

Back in my fifties, when I lived in Pune, India, I met a Polish gentleman living in the flat below mine. We met when our landlord, the only Zoroastrian I've ever met, invited the two of us to a 'get to know you' dinner. I learned the Polish dude had lived in the building for one month, to my two. He revealed he was struggling to adapt to solo living because he missed all his friends back home with whom he interacted face to face frequently. A month or two later...

If ever there was a man before his time, a man who would bring a revolutionary idea to mankind, that man would be Aldo Leopold. He was an avid hunter and outdoorsman envisioning a hunter's paradise teeming with game animals whose numbers could be boosted by eradicating all predators except man and his long gun. His radical new idea was that nature is not a simple collection of random species separate and distinct from each other, but a singular organism with each part, each species, critical to the overall health of the living organism.

My reality begins each morning when I wake from a dreamless sleep, make a mug of Earl Grey tea sweetened with a 60% honey, 40% brown sugar combination. I carry the steaming mug with a white base decorated in black with Ancient Ancestor, geometrical patterns copied from the stone puzzle walls at Chaco Canyon, place it beside me on the altar I made from a slab of beechwood painted with turquoise, made to appear distressed with sandpaper exposing arcs of the wood's original white bones.

Humanity owes the fruit-bearing serpent a huge debt of gratitude for showing us the way to escape from a state of punishment to one of liberation. Eating the fruit was to break free of bondage, setting humanity on its way to achieving our full potential. The simple act of disobedience put the human in humanity. Eden was never a paradise. Rather, it was a prison designed for continual surveillance. The awareness of being constantly watched enforced discipline and obedience. Every action was subject to divine scrutiny with the potential for punishment for disobeying God's arbitrary rules and regulations. The prisoners are confined to the prison yard Eden with God, the wall and razor wire preventing escape by all means except eating the juicy forbidden fruit growing from the Tree of Knowledge.

write on paper, almost daily, to the tune of one and only one sheet. That amounts to 365 pages over the course of a year, accumulating to 3,650 pages in ten years. In tree terms, that is somewhere between 0.37 and 0.44 trees per decade. This does not account for the bound books I read, a number that is steadily decreasing to a few per year.

As a lover of the written word, I devour books, not as a snake swallows a single book whole rather nibbling at various books as a butterfly flits from beautiful flower to beautiful flower, sipping at their nectar, experiencing an intellectual high of many flavors. Books are as important to my spiritual life as breathing sweet air is to the health of my body. Indispensable! As such, there are books as important to me as the Bible is to believers. The greatest dichotomy, I don't claim my canon is the inerrant utterances of a mythical sky daddy whose ass I must kiss to enter, upon death, and receive the gift of an eternity of servitude.

For as long as I can remember, people have been captivated by the idea of life existing beyond Earth's boundaries. Little green men (assuming they are not hermaphroditic) visiting Earth surreptitiously to either live among us, abduct us for anal probing experiments, or plotting our demise allowing them to strip mine Earth for resources unavailable elsewhere in the multiverse.

I typically feel fear as a constricting knot in my stomach before realizing my building anxiety exists, prior to becoming fearful, and in the most extreme cases, a panic attack finding me curling fetal in my bed, wishing my demons away. Even when the symptoms start, it takes time for me to recognize my pain is psychological, not physical. Upon recognition, I move forward, rearranging the debilitating thoughts into controllable and uncontrollable riffing of the great cricket batsman, Sachin Tendulkar, to control the controllable.

It feels, for most of my life, I have been told, ordered, and cajoled to be obedient, to attend church, excel in school, graduate from university with a degree that would support me, follow the rules of the road and land, respect authority, and other such trite nonsense ostensibly to have and enjoy the good life. The implication is that being an obedient drone will lead to prosperity and happiness. Alternatively, to create waves in the societal fabric would bring disrepute down on top of my head, for which I will rightfully be punished. Succinctly, 'go along to get along' as does the majority of society.

For as long as I can remember, I have prided myself on knowing things, obscure things with little value other than making me appear smarter than I actually am. It was an adrenaline rush shouting out the correct answer before anyone else could raise their hand, earning praise and admiration for my correctness, notwithstanding the egregious relational errors in the process. But, does knowing bits and tids of oddball facts correlate to intelligence? Or simply a mind capable of memorization?

For some, rebellion against injustice comes easily. It is because some of us were born with a rebellious streak hard-wired into our DNA that drives us to confront rather than avoid inequity. A rebellious nature can be viewed as a curse because we have difficulty going along to get along. A rebellious spirit is actually a blessing because rebels are not blown about like chaff in a stiff wind generated from the masses moving in the same direction, similar to a dead fish going with the stream's flow. I readily admit that embracing one's rebellious nature is fraught with challenges...

Unlike in the US, where we hide our elderly in semi-permeable prisons with others of their kind visiting them as time in busy schedules permits, indigenous peoples who tended to venerate the aged kept their mature family members living with them. They were fully aware their ancient ones had earned a lifetime of wisdom from which they offered apples of knowledge for the asking, a tradeoff far outweighing any burden of caring for them as they lost motor and mind functions before succumbing...

I read the news today. Oh boy! About an unlucky people about to lose 250 million acres of public lands to the wealthy, helping them stockpile more money than they can realistically spend in a lifetime, while they cheat their employees out of decent wages. The news was rather sad. Well, I just had to cry. I would like to blame wannabe king TACO, but he is little more than a pawn

Growing up, as I did, indoctrinated in a parochial school system and regularly attending church from birth until I figured a way, in my late teens, to pretend I was going to church while, instead, trying to help the mother ship fight off the invaders from space at the local arcade, the concept of kindness was etched into my psyche as the proper way to conduct oneself in the world. The classic text is the biblical story of The Good Samaritan.

The first Law of Thermodynamics states the cosmic reality that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. In the simplest form, sunlight energy is converted into plant form energy that becomes animal form energy before morphing into microbial energy. Unlike the Laws of the Game for Soccer with its common sense clause that bestows upon the referee the power to ignore the law for the good of the game, the Conservation of Energy Law is an absolute from which deviation is impossible.

There is a progressive conceptual framework when attempting to achieve personal development mastery called SHU-HA-RI. SHU, the initial or beginner stage, is geared toward understanding and mastering the fundamental techniques by meticulously following the prescribed rules without deviation. The neophyte, in Kung Fu terms, the Grasshopper, repeats the fundamentals until they can be executed perfectly without needing to think about their execution.

The surest sign that organized religion is a sham is the assignment of gender to the singular, omnipotent deity, who is and has been orchestrating the universe since pre-time. The deity conjured human life by creating a graven image from the dust on the ground, then breathing into its nostrils. Mary, the proclaimed Mother of God, conceived the second member of the Trinity, not through intercourse with a human or deity, but by a miraculous, non-penetrative act of a transcendent god, elevating virginity to some mystical state, ignoring that the sacred act of intercourse for procreation was designed by their God. This is unlike Greek Mythology, where a physical union between a God and a mortal was necessary to produce offspring.

One of my success factors when leading global software development teams was understanding the way national culture influences values, behaviors, and social interactions. If you were not aware of the differences, there hangs the assumption that everyone is more or less thinks and acts with similar motivations to our own. Understanding that not everyone thinks like me or embraces the norms dominant in my country of origin helped me adapt my thinking and behaviors for optimal collaboration without compromising my integrity.

There was once a dream that was America. In that dream, the founders envisaged a perfect Union based on justice, domestic tranquility, general welfare, and the blessings of liberty on them and our posterity. It was a wild dream, a vivid dream, a dream not readily available in Europe riddled as it was with despots, kings, and an unhealthy political affiliation with the Catholic Church itself flailing on the whims of a corrupted hierarchy up to and including the Popes eager to fill their coffers with gold allowing them to live a life of luxury while the suffering peasants were expected to tithe their meager portions.

In the technology world, there is a generally accepted axiom to skip the initial release of a product and await the second iteration before making a purchase. It is well known, time to market is of utmost importance, more important than the quality of the product, to a degree. The first version, although inspired by a flash of genius, is rushed to market for exposure while knowing it is not feature-rich and will have inherent flaws...hopefully nothing too malignant that people will disparage the product on social media and tank potential sales.

The sordid history of the West is rife with tales of people who view nature as a beast to be tamed, a bird whose wings must be clipped to remove the gift of flight, then confined to a cage where it perches looking longingly at the free skies where it once danced starting with a few flaps of elegantly clothed wings. This abominable act so a human may keep beauty chained in their isolationist home while keeping the natural world long ago abandoned by the naked ape at many arms' length. They fail to realize, the captured bird is suffering the ignominy of prison life, is but a shell, a husk, the chaff of a once free and independent soul.

My soul has been abuzz with spiritual angst for as long as I can remember. It is a queasiness similar to that felt in a churning stomach when suffering through love unrequited. There is a longing for connectedness that hovers just outside my grasp, resulting in deepening susto, soul sickness, and the sense that I am at odds with the beauty, harmony, peace, and balance of the universe. I've stumbled into temporary reprieves, anesthetics not cures.

So critical to the successful survival of the human race is the Secular Humanist drive to compassion, it has become a core tenet of the major religious cults dominating society, claiming it as their own rather than borrowed from nonbelievers. In Buddhism, it is called karunā and is considered one of the highest virtues for a human. The central path of the Bodhisattva is to help others attain enlightenment before they avail themselves of the elevated consciousness. Jainism extends the circle of compassion to include all beings.

I first heard this quote in the incredible movie, The Dead Poets Society, featuring Robin Williams. It was a role that earned him significant nominations from the Motion Picture industry, but, through an oversight born of myopia, he did not win. The Germans, however, did bestow an award for Best International Actor. Gracias, Deutschland for doing what the Academy, with their heads up their asses, refused to do...honor greatness.

Intimacy is a many splendid thing, until it isn't leaving at least one, maybe both parties, in a state of excruciating pain, confusion, and a fear to ever be vulnerable again. I am not referring to sexual intimacy, which tends to be a mixed bag of emotional and physical connectedness. Sexual congress can also arise devoid of intimacy because one or both parties craves sexual release, a common quality with men since the dawn of time, and becoming more common with women in modern times.

One of the greatest challenges for the continuation of the human species is that we view ourselves as separate from, rather than an integral part of, the natural world. From this perspective, that places us on a perch with the other gods and goddesses, we believe it is our right to hurt, maim, kill, and obliterate our fellow travelers, be they animal, bacteria, mineral, or plant.

Depending upon perspective, the monkey regularly hijacking my mind, swinging from idea to idea without exploring the savory thoughts ripening on the branch, is either a curse or a blessing. The term monkey mind is derived from a Chinese word meaning heart-mind monkey. It is an idea foundational across Buddhist traditions to describe how thoughts jump capriciously from one focus to another, no matter how tenuous the interstitial connection or non-connections between leaps. It is often paired with the phrase "idea horse," further emphasizing the mind's restless and wandering nature.

Given my druthers, I would prefer to drive the three thousand miles necessary to cross the country than take a plane covering the same distance in a fraction of the time. Not because I don't value my time, but rather because I tend to be diligent in investing my time for maximum return. Life is a collection of loosely connected experiences. Those experiences can be direct through participatory action, vicarious hearing of others' activities, or imagined as in a daydream, a night dream, or a vision. Who amongst us has not woken from a dream or emerged from a vision so lost we forget where we are, while our heart beats out of our chest trying to get our bearings?

I have an affinity for Ravens, which is odd for a person growing up in an area of the country where they don't typically venture. I have a particular, perhaps peculiar, fondness for a Raven with sun-yellow eyes named Mortimer, whom I have encountered on unique occasions while visiting my beloved southwest United States. It is just now that I am putting two and two together and realize the connection is possibly, dare I say likely, we are generational compadres, displaced countrymen far from our Norse roots.

Raised, as I was, in a Western, Judeo-Christian society, I was indoctrinated not only with the concept of a capricious, vindictive god but also with the associated philosophy that time is linear, a limited resource, a one-way progression with a beginning and end bookending me in the present, a unique sequence of non-repeating events moving forward with an ultimate deadline.

I have heard the human condition is as a body harboring the spirit, and, alternatively, a human is a spirit inhabiting a body. The subtle difference in language when equating body and spirit has an impact well beyond the juxtaposition of the two words, body and spirit. The former arrangement implies the body is the primary home that releases the soul upon death. The latter designates the soul as the foundation with the body, but a temporary housing for a soul to exist in the physical realm before death, whose ultimate home is the spirit realm. It all boils down to the key question, which is primary, body or soul?